And Hell Followed With Them
by AshenDream
Summary: Ten years after Kiritsugu Emiya summoned a Servant that should have been out of reach, the First Hassan-i-Sabbah, the original Old Man of the Mountain, the Fifth Holy Grail War has begun. Shirou Emiya, Master to an Assassin whose very existence threatens to tear him apart, must finish what his father began- and the First Hassan is not the only impossibility that stalks Fuyuki City.
1. Prologue: On The Boundary

_Disclaimer: If I get things wrong that can't be explained by the butterfly effect, then take a deep breath, because it wouldn't be true to the Nasuverse if it was 100% consistent. _

_Fate/stay night is one of my favorite visual novels, and I love almost every character to death, and I hope that comes through (no matter how badly I might bully them). I saved up a ton of quartz for Gramps, and then I got two copies of him in the same 10-roll, so me writing this fic was pretty much a divine mandate from the gacha. This fic does assume you're familiar with the original, so I gloss over a lot of the exposition, and I will be spoiling certain revelations (from the Fate route and Heaven's Feel especially) in a pretty offhand way. _

_I won't stop you from reading, but I'd recommend checking out the original first! Just skip the sex scenes. I'm going to try to post roughly every two weeks, and I've got almost 50k written as I publish this, so I've got a lot of cool stuff lined up!_

* * *

Fuyuki City burned.

The swordsman was neither happy nor unhappy with this fact. Collateral damage was something he sought to avoid, but when the enemy was as powerful as the man in the golden armor, destruction was a natural byproduct. They stood in what had, a few hours before, been an idyllic park, the sort of green oasis that civilization had used to brighten its urban sprawls since before the swordsman had _been_ a man. Now, it was an inferno, towering columns of flame roaring even where there should not have been enough fuel to burn. Great furrows had been carved into the dirt and grass, blasted apart by the sheer force of their violence. A playscape for children lay shattered around his feet, bars of metal twisted and torn and bent into something unrecognizable and skeletal. Smoke choked the air. If there had been people here before the battle had come to this place, most were either gone or dead. In the distance, someone wailed, the sound high and mournful and broken.

High overhead, a great circle of black hung in the sky like a dead sun, seeming to draw all light into itself. If the swordsman stopped and focused, he could see the fine threads of life, such that were left in the conflagration, being drawn inexorably upward, pulled into the negative space the way water naturally contorted to fill an empty cup. The Grail was almost ready. There remained only a single sacrifice needed to open the gate, and the power surged against its bindings, hungry to be used. To be unleashed. Thrumming, hateful power deep within his bones set him on edge.

That hadn't happened in a long time. The swordsman had seen everything, he'd thought. Nothing surprised him. Nothing affected him.

The so-called Holy Grail shook him to his very core.

Why he was here, he didn't know. There had been an irregularity. Something that broke the rules as he intuitively knew them. His essence was not meant to be distilled into the form of a Servant. He was more than that. When the summoning had come, however, his spirit origin had been carved and contorted and mangled to fit a vessel that was never meant to hold one such as him. No longer Grand.

He considered the weight of the sword in his right hand, examining it quickly for damage. A normal man would not have been able to lift it, yet to him it weighed little more than a feather. An ordinary broadsword, suffused with his will. Not a Noble Phantasm at all, for there was no record of it, no legend to give it power. As far as history was concerned, it had never existed. It was black as the armor he wore, its tip eternally stained with fresh blood. A symbol of his grim duty.

Strapped to his other arm was a massive black shield, spiked and cruel, a skull with burning blue eyes emblazoned across it. A bulwark of steady darkness against the golden man's all-consuming light. The swordsman had a duty, and he had carried it unto death, and beyond. So long as the continued existence of the human race remained God's will, he would trim rotting branches, to keep the blight from spreading to the rest of the tree. He was no agent of the Counter Force, no Guardian summoned after the fact into the worst evils mankind could engineer. He worked proactively. Not often, but just enough to nudge history into something it was meant to be. Something that would continue. He was who he was. First among murderers. The righteous blade, armored in darkest shadow.

Allowing his Master to unlock the Grail would bring untold death and destruction to the city. All the evils of the world would pour forth to consume what they could, to grant his Master's benevolent wish in the most destructive way possible. He knew this the way he knew the color of the sky, or the taste of water, or the heat of the desert sun. He was bound to help him achieve this.

There was a contradiction in that, the swordsman knew. To be sworn to protect the world, while at the same time, doing everything in his power to help usher in unnatural, malevolent death. Two things guided his path, allowed him to reconcile the combating duties.

The golden man - the Archer of this War - raised his right arm. The armor covering the limb had been shattered, and his bloodied fingers trembled with weakness. A glancing blow, early in the fight, but it had been enough to break the gauntlet open. A hundred golden gates opened in the air around him, golden light hazy in the smog. His arm thrust toward the swordsman, and droplets of blood flew through the air, followed by weapons of every conceivable make and shape. Every one authentic. Every one a Noble Phantasm.

The first: he had been summoned into this war for a reason. The rules had been broken to allow his participation. If God had deigned to allow His servant to become a Servant, there was a reason for that. Some ultimate need that would only be fulfilled by his victory in the challenge placed before him.

The swordsman was a great hulk of a man, weighed down by armor thick enough to crush a mortal, but when he needed to move, he flowed like water. Every movement precise, calculated. Exactly the motion he needed to avoid each weapon, and not an inch more. Behind him, dirt sprayed and fire bloomed, the ground torn asunder by the assault. Concussive blasts of sound and force filled the air. Dust settled onto his armor, into his cloak, but he remained unharmed.

The distant screaming had stopped.

The second: the swordsman's Master was a good man. He did his best to hide it, and his methods were familiar, but his wish was not an evil one. Pragmatic, but not cruel. More than that, he was _perceptive_. The swordsman thought that when the time came, he would recognize the Grail's true nature and reject it. It was a kind of faith, and there was protection in faith. If he didn't, though, if he reached the Grail and decided the end was worth the price, he would use his last command spell to end the swordsman. The swordsman would _make_ him use it.

A small part of him took comfort, though, in the idea that his Master using the Grail would be the lesser of the two evils. Though he had never met Archer's Master, a Servant _always_ matched their summoner in some way. The catastrophe would be total.

Archer's teeth clenched, the lines at the corners of his eyes tightening. He hid it well, but the swordsman had seen enough desperation in his millennia to recognize it when he saw it. Archer was a man who was used to being the most powerful in any given situation. How long had it been since he had needed to _try_ to accomplish anything? The swordsman had taken stock of the other Servant the first time they'd clashed, and he had found little reason to revise his initial assessment. Archer was powerful; tremendously so. In a contest of raw strength, the swordsman knew that they would be evenly matched. This, however, was the difference between them.

The swordsman had been born a man. The lowest of the low. Everything he was, every scrap of power he possessed, he had worked for, clawing for every inch until his fingers were bloody, until his nails bent back and broke. Training his body and mind into razor sharpness, and beyond. He knew what it was to be powerless, and he would never take that power for granted. He knew what it was to believe in something.

The Archer had always had everything. He knew not what it meant to struggle. To fight. He was used to executions, not battle. He was untrained. Untested. A child with the ultimate power to destroy, and no guiding values to wield it in service of. Arrogance was not faith.

The swordsman walked slowly forward, smoke swirling around him like a cloak. Each step was heavy and inevitable.

Archer took an unconscious step back, then grit his teeth again. There it was. Petulant resolve. If he was going to die, he was going to take the swordsman with him. He spit onto the ground, and it was bloody. "Mongrel! You don't know who I am. You should be bowing before me."

The swordsman didn't reply. _Crunch_. He threw the shield away, letting it thump quietly to the ground. He had no more need of it. All around them, an unseen bell tolled, slow and bone-deep. _Crunch._ Even the fires around them flickered and seemed to recede in terrified respect.

"You look upon Gilgamesh, King of Heroes!" Archer drew himself to his full height, arms spread wide. His breastplate was dented and scuffed, only one of his arms still armored. "Divine blood runs through my veins, and all the world belongs to me!" He was almost screaming, bloody spittle flying from his lips

_Crunch. _The bell sounded again, in time with the swordsman's slow steps. "**Hearken, Gilgamesh, King of Heroes. The evening bell tolls thy name."**

Gilgamesh, to his credit, held his ground. In his right hand, a strange sword appeared. It looked more like a strange, stunted lance than a sword, but the swordsman recognized its power in an instant. "You are my subject! My property!" He raised the sword, slowly, and the air pulsed around it, smoke spinning lazily, growing faster and faster. "You will end because I demand it! _I am Gilgamesh! Look upon Ea, mongrel, and know that your end has come!"_

The distance between them closed, his walk never more than deliberate. "**Wings of death, wilt thou sever his head?"**

The power around Ea coalesced, turning red, the maelstrom churning at a fever pitch. The bell stopped, and though they still burned, even the sound of the flames faded to nothing. His voice roared, angry and afraid and disbelieving. "_Enuma-"_

"**AZRAEL."**

Even the swirling of the smoke went still. The swordsman stood beside Gilgamesh, sword extended straight out before him. Ea sputtered and sparked and grew dim.

Gilgamesh stood as though he were locked in place, his body trembling, his arm still extended. His eyes were like dinner plates, and his mouth worked, trying to form words. Nothing came out but a quiet hiss of breath. The tip of the sword shook violently.

The swordsman turned his sword over in his hand, resting the point down onto the burned ground. He inclined his head, one last gesture of genuine respect. "**Return to the Throne, King of Heroes. This world holds no place for the faithless."**

Gilgamesh's head toppled backward, and a moment later the rest of his body pitched forward. The golden light consumed him before he hit the ground.

All around him, the fires still burned. Sound returned to the scene. Smoke still filled the air. Above him, the darkness grew deeper. The vessel filled. As motionless as a statue, Hassan-i-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, first of the name, waited for his Master to return. To return, and to make his choice.

The fate of the Grail was no longer in his hands.


	2. Eclipsed

**ACT 1: Wind In Dry Grass**

* * *

After the brutal cacophony of battle, the sudden silence hit like a gauntleted fist to the gut.

Upon further reflection, though, that feeling might actually have been caused by the butt of the lance that had driven him clear through the sturdy wooden wall of his shed. He didn't think he'd lost consciousness, but his head pounded where it had impacted the sturdy shed wall, and the whole world had become a swirling mess of colors and lines.

_Okay, Shirou. Take a breath. Can you breathe?_

To his surprise, he could. Air filled his lungs with a shuddering gasp, and his fingers scrabbled against the hard concrete of the flooring. He had to stand. If he could stand, he had a chance. If he could stand, he could fight. There was no time. His feet kicked weakly as he fumbled desperately for something steady to grab ahold of.

A shadow passed over the moon, out of sight. The murderer would be here any second. The shadows lengthened. How had it come to this? His confused, battered mind tried to link the events of the past few hours into a story that made many sort of sense, but from where he was slumped, it was a movie with half the scenes cut out. From the archery dojo to the school to here… Hunted by the man with the blue clothes and red lance.

He'd had a weapon, hadn't he? Fuji-nee's poster. The one he'd strengthened. Where was it? The deepening shadows hid it from him, if it hadn't simply been torn apart. He felt light-headed. Hyperventilating, maybe. Too much breath, too fast. His hands were still numb from the force of the impact of his parries, transmitted through his makeshift weapon. He hadn't put up much of a fight, had he?

_Don't imagine you can hit me with your skills,_ Fuji-nee crowed distantly. _You need to practice more._

"Not now," he mumbled, his hand catching on the corner of a shelf. It didn't move when he pulled, so he used it to get a foot under him. "This is serious." His chest burned.

Maybe he was just exhausted. Dying could do that to a person.

His mind skipped, repeated, like a scratched record. Dying could do that to a person. Something crimson dripping from the lance. A wry smile that was almost bored. Those lazy, languid movements belied an inhuman speed, which meant that he could be here between one eyeblink and the next, which meant _fire_ _in his chest_ which meant _his blood on the floor_ which meant _that horrible crushing darkness-_

But the darkness, it seemed, was already here.

There was something wrong with the air.

It had grown _thick. _

He could still breathe, somehow, but looking even to the far wall was growing more and more difficult. He struggled to understand. An eclipse? No, this was something much more personal than that. Like... the very air itself had become something solid that the light could not penetrate. The life drained from the atoms around him. More than that, the blackening air _rolled_, turning and pulsating and boiling like a thick fog.

_When did that-_

Ice filled his veins, freezing lines tracing his entire body, and he found he didn't even have the strength to shiver. His mind had gone blank, save for the fear that was turning his stomach into a leaden knot. The silence was deafening. Even the rustling wind had gone dead, and the world hung suspended between one moment and the next, unable to move on. He was back on ground, his back pressed against the cold wall, and he didn't remember how he'd gotten there.

Was this death? Had the spear taken him already, and this was his mind struggling to catch up? No, he'd already experienced that once. This was close, but it wasn't the same. That darkness had not felt so malevolent, but this fog dripped murderous intent in a way that was almost literal.

And in that horrible blackness, two points of burning red light shone like fire.

"**I ask of thee. Art thou my contractor?"**

Reality itself reverberated with the power of that baritone voice, spoken without inflection. The words echoed and the words hung dead in the air, apparently seeing no issue with the contradiction. His bones shook and his teeth vibrated and his mind quavered.

The lump in Shirou's throat prevented him from speaking; not that he had any idea what to say. Speaking, or breathing. His lungs were burning. He wasn't sure _when_ he'd stopped breathing.

And despite the overwhelming wrongness that screamed in every fiber of his being, in his mind, this was the natural conclusion to the day he'd had. In the last few hours, Shirou had seen two men fight with more grace and power than any human should have been able to muster, been stabbed to death by one of them, found himself mysteriously alive (yet covered in blood) and clutching an unfamiliar pendant, and had fought off the same impossible man with nothing more than a poster. This… might as well happen too.

A tingling burn engulfed Shirou's right hand, and all he could manage in protest was a grunt that sounded pathetic even to his own ears. He clapped his other hand over it, groaning. _Sakura's going to kill me if I split my cut open again. _

In contrast to the feeling in his bones, the lights (eyes?) were indifferent. If intent of any kind lay behind them, it was hidden well. "**I see. Then it is true."** Was there a figure in the shadow? A great, hulking monster of a man, clad in jagged armor? Or was his battered mind just trying to find a pattern in the madness? "**The compact is sealed, and thine life is my duty." **

Silence.

Shirou's eyes were wide, his back against the wall, hands pressing limply into the floor as the eyes gazed dispassionately down at him. It was like a scene from a nightmare; the kind that had no beginning and no logic, merely the purest idea of overwhelming terror that haunted the unconscious mind. Suffocating darkness suffused every part of the scene.

Movement in the shadow. "**The supply is insufficient. My sword, shackled." **

_Supply? _Shirou's punchdrunk brain turned the word over one way, then the other, probing at it as if it were the blueprint of something he could understand. No matter which way he looked at it, though, it was meaningless. This whole… _whatever_ was happening was meaningless.

The fog swirled, and the eyes turned to look back out, into the night.

"**It is no matter."**

As if a great gust of wind had torn through a misty day, the blackness cleared, the silhouette resolving into something even more bizarre. A suit of black armor, spiked and engraved, with what could only be a human skull for a helmet, gripping the most massive sword Shirou had ever seen in one fist as easily he would a bow. Long, thin needles of metal fanned out from his back, clawing for the sky. Sheer power radiated from him, but not in any way that Shirou recognized. If this was magic, it was not of a kind Kiritsugu had ever shown him.

"**Thus, it begins."**

Beyond him, the man in blue hunkered down into a combat stance, his eyes wide and… afraid? His playful, mocking demeanor was now completely gone. Was the tip of his lance trembling, just a little? "What are you?" the spearman hissed, his voice tight. "The last Servant? But that would make you-"

Then the monster took one heavy step forward, the heavy crunch of the metal boot on stone and broken wood a thunderclap, and Shirou's entire world dissolved into pain. Every nerve, every atrophied magic circuit he possessed caught fire as one, and he screamed, scratching at his skin as if he could physically rip into himself and tear the torment away. Moments or years later, blackness took him again, merciful unconsciousness smothering him into blissful nothing.

* * *

"Archer?"

The man in red held up a hand, a silent command. His shoulders were stiff, and looking at his back gave her the image of a coiled spring ready to release, if a coiled spring could feel fear. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "Do you feel that, Rin?"

Rin blinked, her breath misting out before her in the cold winter air. "Feel that? What do you-"

It was as if the false priest's church bell had been rung inside her body, but instead of deafening _sound_, what pulsed over the area was simply an almost physical _deafening_, as though someone had hit mute on the world. Accompanying the _absence_ was a tremendous outpouring of raw magical power, the likes of which Rin had only seen once or twice in her life. It suffused the air, choking her, her own magical energy seeming to dim out of sheer deference to… whatever the hell _this_ was. Shortly behind that came another wave of sensation, this one a smell. Old dirt and decay.

The smell of the grave.

When she'd gathered enough breath to speak, it was an effort to keep her voice level. "Ah. I see what you mean." She wasn't sure she managed it.

Matching swords had materialized in her Servant's hands, and his head darted back and forth like a nervous rabbit with an unnervingly large collection of weapons. Surveying the area. The shadows, especially. "Change of plans, Rin. We need to leave. We can't go into that blind." He gestured at the bounded field before them. "Whatever that is in there, it's on a completely different level from Lancer."

Rin gritted her teeth, balling her hands into fists so tight that her nails drew blood. Guilt swelled up in her stomach. She channeled it into anger. "We came here for a reason, Archer. If whatever that thing is is really that powerful, then he's in even more danger than we thought. If we let that dumbass die now, this will have all been for nothing."

Archer took a deliberate step backward. "Have you ever heard of something called a 'lost cause?' If we continue without knowing what we're up against, this war will be over before it starts. Do you want to be remembered as a part of the shortest Holy Grail War in history?"

But it seemed the decision had been made for them. "**Archer, clad in red. Turn, and face thy judgement."**

While Rin was still processing that statement, Archer was already in motion. With a strength that seemed effortless, he planted his palm on her collarbone and shoved her back, sending her sailing through the air, and away. A snapshot of something huge and dark standing in the shadows to her Servant's left, twin points of red burning in a skull's visage. The world tilted crazily, and "Archer…!" was all she had time to scream before her back hit sidewalk, and she started skidding. Years of trained reflex were all that gave her time to throw up enough of a magical barrier to keep from concussing herself on the concrete, but pain still blasted through her.

_This coat is ruined_, she thought, but it seemed distant, as though another person, barely within earshot, had spoken it. She shook her head, grimacing, and looked up.

The armored figure was carrying a slab of metal that was almost too big to be _called_ a sword, and as her eyes finally focused, she saw it move. Or, to be more precise, she saw it resting point down on the ground one moment, and the next, it was almost effortlessly shattering Archer's twin swords into useless shards of metal. The contact seemed to provide just enough deflection to save Archer's life, however, as the man in red threw himself back in what was less a graceful dodge and more a desperate lunge for survival.

Rin screamed something that only counted as a word by the broadest of definitions, her crest flashed, and shimmering lights snaked out of the ground, wrapping around the other Servant's ankles and cinching tight. The swordsman walked forward, almost leisurely, and he did not even hesitate when the bindings snapped and dissolved. Her mouth went dry, and she jammed her hands into her pockets, skittering backward with her legs, digging desperately for the mana gems she'd prepared.

The swordsman swung again, and once more, and each time Archer only barely deflected with a fresh pair of blades. He'd gone through a few dozen sets with Lancer, but not this quickly; every blow he deflected necessitated another projection. Rin had only seen Archer fight a single time, but from that one encounter, she'd learned a lot about his fighting style. It was quick, and it was reactive, and it was cerebral. Doing just enough to stay alive while analyzing the opponent's style for openings and weaknesses. The problem, she saw, was that the other Servant seemed to be operating under different rules than he was. There was barely any technique to analyze; each swing of the massive sword was powerful, deliberate, but direct - and so fast that it left no time to take advantage of an opening, even reflexively.

She threw her hand out again, shouted, and her fully powered Gandr pinged uselessly off the armor, no more effective than a pebble would have been. That would have blown a man's head clean off.

Two more swords shattered, and Archer stumbled backward with a grunt. The skull-faced monster strode forward, unhurried. "Servant Saber, I'm guessing." There was a note in his voice that she didn't currently have the brainspace to analyze for meaning. "That thing hits hard, doesn't it?" The tension in his voice contrasted with the casual words, and Rin's fingers closed around a gem. "I don't recognize it, and I know a little about Noble Phantasms."

The skull tilted in something that looked like respect. "**It has been some time since any man deflected my blade with weapons so unsuited to the task, Red Archer." **It stopped walking, and drove it's blade point first into the ground once more. She'd seen how fast he could strike even from that stance, but it was a token gesture of respite. "**Thou stand in the presence of Servant Assassin."**

A look of genuine surprise flitted across Archer's face. "Servant-"

"Assassin?!" Rin finished. "No way. That's… That doesn't…." It didn't make sense. All servants were powerful, yes, but if any class were considered the weakest, it was Assassin. It specialized in avoiding direct combat, in killing masters from the shadows. This, whatever it was… It _couldn't_ be an Assassin. "That's not fair!" she blurted before she could stop herself.

"**Believe me not if thou wish. It has been a pleasure crossing swords with you." **And without preamble, the sword swung again, and again, driving Archer back yet again. He was outmatched. He was outmatched, and he was going to die. A desperate plan formulated, one she knew would result in her death, but she had nothing else. Run, let Archer hold Assassin off long enough for her to escape, then summon him to her with her last free command spell. If he could survive that long. If Assassin couldn't follow her trail. If if if.

It was all she had.

* * *

Shirou came to, and the pain had not abated. If anything, it had intensified, and that was what had awoken him. He screamed until his throat was raw, and he writhed, and he almost wished for death. Whatever hell awaited him had to be more pleasant than another minute of this.

But death didn't come, and he was still lying on the floor. This wasn't so bad, really. He turned his backbone into an iron rod of pain most nights, right? This was almost familiar. Shirou didn't do a lot of things well, but what he did have was a remarkably high tolerance for pain.

With two shaking hands, he grasped his workbench and hauled himself to his feet. His legs trembled, unconscious grunts thrummed in his chest, and he gave himself a minute to see if he could stand unassisted.

He could not.

He slumped onto the workbench, breath heaving, and tried to reorient. Okay, yeah, this was pretty bad. It was more than a nuisance. It was crippling. It was-

_fire burning all around him smoke choking choking his breath rubble crushing him grinding his bones into dust alone burning hurting scared scared scared why won't anyone stop this before it_

He came to again, and before he could give himself time to think, to let the pain transport him back to things he'd rather not think about, he slapped himself. His head spun, but he didn't return to the fire. A lonely voice, warm and red like the evening sky, filled his head.

"_Even I could tell it was impossible, so he must have known as well."_

Had that really been last night? Sipping tea with Sakura in an empty classroom, watching the sunset… it felt like years ago. His legs shook, and each breath sent fresh waves of pain through his chest. There were tears on his face. He wouldn't let himself fall, but neither could he move forward. The outside of the shed might as well have been the other side of the universe.

"_But he wouldn't give up."_

Why bother? What would he accomplish? Who would he help by destroying himself? He should just let himself sink to the ground. Try not to make it worse. Whatever the monster did was out of his hands, wasn't it?

"_He's probably someone very dependable."_

Sound filled his mind. Shouting. Screaming? A name that he couldn't quite make out. Clanging. Shattering.

_There's someone else out there with it._

He was running before his brain could catch up, but by the time he'd gotten about halfway the gate, something resembling a fully formed thought had come together. The monster had moved on from the man in blue, and found new prey. Innocent prey.

His leg gave out, and he tumbled to the ground. He tried to catch himself, but without the strength to do that, his wrist jammed farther back than it was meant to go. _At least I was on the grass. _Another pain added to the pile, but it was so faint beneath the boiling agony that was his body that it made no difference. The voice screamed again. A girl's voice. Familiar, in a way he couldn't place.

Resolve flooded through him, an antidote to the weakness eating through him. He was on his feet again without remembering how he'd gotten there, stumbling to the gate. His shoulder clipped the frame, hard, and it was all he could do to grab hold and keep standing.

Just outside his house. A girl in a red coat, a trickle of blood on her forehead. The armored monstrosity, sword in hand, about to strike. A handsome tan skinned man with white hair, covered in sweat, gripping two swords that drew the eye in a way that said Shirou probably had a concussion on top of everything else.

"Stop," he said, but all that came out was a whisper.

The world juddered as his consciousness wavered, and he forced himself to remain upright. The white-haired man was on the ground now, and there was a massive black boot on his chest. The sword was raised, a silent executioner about to dispassionately remove a head.

Time stopped. He raised his hand, unconscious of the gesture, and with everything he had screamed "STOP!" Something on the back of his hand flashed red, the monster disappeared, and the pain vanished. He had just enough time to think that it felt like falling before a crushing exhaustion blacked out the world for a third time.

* * *

It was over. Archer was going to die, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She needed to run. She'd told herself she was going to run. But no. She was Rin Tohsaka, Master in the Fifth Holy Grail War. She wouldn't run. If this was death, she would face it head-on, unafraid.

Well, maybe a little afraid. But steady and strong.

Still, when the moment came that her Servant was to die, she screamed. "Archer!"

He didn't look over at her. He spit in the face of the Assassin-Knight looming over him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of fear to the last.

She saw him a split second before he acted. It was him. Shirou Emiya. The one she'd gotten killed, and the one she'd saved. He looked awful. He wasn't exactly drop-dead gorgeous at the best of times, but his skin had an unpleasant grey tinge to it, under the sheets of sweat running down his face. His eyes were red, like he'd been crying, and when he raised his hand before him, it shook.

_No,_ she wanted to say. _This isn't worth dying again for. Get back inside, and let this whole stupid mess have meant something. _

"STOP!" His voice made it sound like razor blades had been dragged across his vocal cords, and it quavered and died toward the end. His hand flashed red, and Assassin froze mid-swing, his blade hovering inches from Archer's throat, still as a statue. Then he faded away, as though he had never existed at all. Simultaneously, the boy crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut, collapsing to the ground with a muffled thump. He didn't move.

For three long heartbeats, nothing stirred. The world had become a photograph of the aftermath of chaos. Rin stood bonelessly while, on the ground, Archer was staring up at the sky, wide-eyed. The boy was a tangled heap, facedown on the ground, a command seal unmistakably marking the back of his hand. The wind blew gently, her coat tugging lightly in the breeze. Something deep in her chest rumbled, a pressure desperate to be released, building and building and building until all she could do was let it out in one helpless wail of "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?"

* * *

_Thanks for checking this out! You've all heard the spiel a million times, but if you like this or have thoughts or questions, let me know in the comments! I won't bite, and we authors live for that kind of thing._

_Like I said in the opening author's note, this is gonna update every other Sunday. Hopefully I'll see you all then!_


	3. Just Awake

_My father was haunted. I'd heard the phrase, but I hadn't known what that meant until I met him._

_If the things haunting him had been ghosts, maybe that would have been easier to bear than the specters in his sad, crinkled eyes, or the spirits weighing down his shoulders. He wasn't a sad man. He smiled often, and we passed a lot of afternoons just goofing off together in the dojo. But every so often, his smile would falter, and he'd look away. His slump would become a hunch. His hands would slacken, or they'd clench into fists. It usually happened at night, when the shadows were longest. It always passed quickly, he was never cruel to me, and I never mentioned it to him, but I always noticed._

_He was a man who had a lot to offer the world, I think. He just needed more time. He could have made the world a better place._

_No, that's not fair. Even if it was just in the life of one lonely boy, he did make the world a better place. He taught me to smile, even through the pain. _

_A hero of justice. A superhero. He'd told me that it was a childish notion, and that he was too much an adult to make himself into one. I never understood that. He __**was**_ _a superhero. He was a man who had plunged into fire and death and pulled a little boy from the rubble. If that wasn't a superhero… then what was?_

_I looked up to him. I look up to him. If I can be half the man he was, no matter how hard I have to work, then no cost will be too high. I will make people smile the way he made me smile._

_I remember the end. I didn't know it was the end until it was over, but I think that's just the way life is. It's easy to recognize the good things once they're gone. He spent a whole afternoon cleaning the house, the day before. He'd never done that before. We didn't live in filth, but my father had never been one to tidy up more than absolutely necessary. There's an image I have burned into my head, of coming into the kitchen and seeing him holding a knife. Not by the handle, like he'd been cutting food. He had the blade balanced on the palm, and he was staring at it. I asked him if he was okay, and he jumped like he hadn't noticed I was there. He noticed everything. He looked over at me, and he smiled, and I thought that his eyes were wet, which didn't make sense because my father had never cried before. Not since the day he saved me. I don't remember most of what he said. It didn't make much sense. His metaphors were confusing. But then he looked back down at the knife, and his smile faded a little. "Shirou," he said softly._

_I went up to him and took the knife out of his hands. He let it happen. "You should be careful," I told him. "Knives are dangerous. You shouldn't play with them." He'd taught me that, but sometimes he really was like a big kid._

_He smiled again, that sad smile. "Thanks. Guess I just got distracted." His eyes were distant. "It reminded me of a dream I had, a long time ago. That's all." He ruffled my hair and walked on by, while I slid the knife back into the block. I should have been concerned, but I wasn't. That was just my dad._

_He stopped at the hallway, though. Without turning back, he spoke softly. "Knives are funny things, Shirou. You can make such beautiful things with them." I smiled. I wasn't very good at it, but he often praised my cooking, saying I was better than he would ever be, and that someday I might be a real pro. He was so good at so many things, but he was a disaster in the kitchen. "But they're dangerous, too." He looked down at his hand, fingers splayed, and I couldn't see his eyes. "If you're careless, you can get hurt. The people around you can get hurt." My smile became a frown, and he sagged a little, silhouetted against the doorway. "Sometimes… Sometimes one looks like the other. Remember that, Shirou. Always be sure you can tell the difference."_

_I still don't know what he meant by that._

* * *

Shirou came back to consciousness slowly, the soft ticking of his clock guiding him back to reality like a metronome. It was still dark, but it was a familiar darkness. His bedroom. A peaceful place, nestled in his sheets. A headache pounded at his temples, but pain was an old friend, and it didn't bother him the way it used to.

"That was some dream," he muttered to himself, throwing an arm over his eyes. Dream logic always felt so real in the moment, and so silly in the light of wakefulness. You'd believe anything when you were asleep.

He considered whether or not to go back to sleep. The clock read 4:36, so he had almost an hour until he needed to be up. He was still tired, after all, and his head was throbbing. What decided things, though, was when he noticed how dry his throat was. How parched. "Need some water," he grumbled. Then he'd see how he felt. There were always chores that needed doing, and Shirou was not the kind of person to sit around wasting time.

He pushed himself to his feet, and it was strangely difficult. His whole body felt like rubber, the way it would after a pretty strenuous workout, and his strength seemed to be gone. He flexed his fists experimentally. He could close them, but squeezing them proved difficult. A byproduct of the headache, maybe, and that very well could have been the onset of dehydration. He'd feel better with some water in him. Once he'd successfully shuffled to the door, he pushed it open, then shuffled a little more to the kitchen.

He'd left the lights on all through the house, it seemed. _That's not like me, _he thought dully, staring deeply into a bright lamp like he was some kind of moth. His routine was consistent, if nothing else. The kitchen faucet was even dripping. The cabinet door swung open with a quiet creak, and he fumbled out a glass. With his body so weak, it was hard to get ahold of, but after a minute he managed to get it filled with water. He drank it down in one long pull, then refilled it and stood there by the sink, sipping it. After finishing and refilling the glass a third time, he turned to go back to his room, and froze.

There was a girl sitting against the far wall. She was wearing his school's uniform, her legs were stretched out in front of her and crossed, and she wore a look of supreme skepticism on her face. Her arms were folded across her chest, on which there also seemed to be a significant smudge of dirt. A fresh scab hung on the edge of her forehead. She looked familiar, but every single facet of the image was so wrong that he simply couldn't wrap his mind around it long enough to identify her.

Neither of them moved until she broke the silence. "Is your situational awareness that bad _all_ the time? Because I could have killed you a dozen times a dozen different ways just now, and I don't think you'd have even noticed anything was wrong until you woke up in hell."

Things finally clicked, and he recognized her as... Rin Tohsaka? In his house. In the middle of the night. Kind of beat up. He followed the train of logic to see where it led, and either something horrible and unspeakable had happened last night of which he had no memory… or the dream hadn't been a dream.

Adrenaline hit like a sledgehammer, and before he could think things through, he'd yelled and thrown the only thing close to hand - the full glass of water.

It shattered on the wall about a foot and a half from her head, and without otherwise moving, her look of skepticism became one of sheer disbelief. "Are you a six year old girl?" Her head crept up, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "And you're a Master. Good god. This is the kind of competition I'm dealing with?"

Shirou said the very first thing that came to mind. "What are you doing in my house?" he asked stupidly.

Like a booming cannon going off about a foot and a half from his ear, the hellish voice from the shed thundered. "**The girl is an enemy master. Defend thy sanctuary."**

Shirou shrieked again, but at least this time he had nothing left to throw.

Rin's head was fully in her hands now. "I can't believe this."

A second disembodied voice spoke. "I can."

This was it. This was the last goddamn straw. Shirou considered himself a fairly resilient person. He endured pain well, and he knew how to roll with punches both literal and metaphorical. But this? _This?_ He was putting his foot down. He stomped once, like a petulant child, and the combination of his ankle suddenly screaming that it might be broken and the overwhelming weakness in his body nearly knocked him to the ground yet again. "Tohsaka!"

Tohsaka blinked up at him, clearly unimpressed. "Yes?"

"Explain all this."

A slow, catlike smile spread across Tohsaka's face. "All this? Oh, Emiya, you poor thing. You must have hit your head pretty hard on the way down, because _obviously _you couldn't _possibly_ be this dense normally. You see, this thing we're standing in right now is a house, and this…" she patted the ground beside her, "is called a floor. My name is Rin T-"

Shirou made a noise that was somewhere between the sound of being punched and the sound of being strangled, and Tohsaka sobered.

"You really don't know?" Her voice was pensive. "You have no idea what you're caught up in?" Something that looked almost like pity passed like a shadow over her face.

The second disembodied voice spoke up. It seemed to be coming from about a foot above Shirou's head, along the wall by Tohsaka. "I'm getting the feeling that this one doesn't know a lot of things. I say we have an easy kill right here, and then we're down to five enemies. It's a no-brainer."

"Kill?" Shirou protested, at the same moment that Tohsaka muttered, "Not now, Archer." Her fist was pressed pensively to her mouth. "I can't kill someone who doesn't even know why they're dying."

"**An honorable sentiment."** This voice, the monster's voice, came from behind Shirou. He jerked backward, but nothing but his kitchen lay behind him. "**For respect of my Contractor's will, I have temporarily allowed thee respite, but if thou doth persist in a hostile course of action, I will not show thee mercy again."**

"I've known some honorable people in my life," the second voice - Archer - said. "You know what happened to them? They died, and they died badly. Because honor is just a pretty little lie people tell themselves when they don't have the stomach for what they need to do."

"Shut up, Archer." She waved vaguely at the empty air. "Okay, okay. Emiya. Shirou." Using his given name seemed to cause her actual physical pain. "Let's… start basic. Tell me you know about magic."

Shirou's brow furrowed. "Magic? I know a little. My father taught me what he could." He had also been told to keep his knowledge a secret, but these circumstances seemed to call for desperate measures.

Tohsaka nodded, relaxing a little. "Good. That'll make things easier. Magical theory? Application? What schools of magic are you proficient in?"

Shirou shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable. Like he'd stumbled into a very important exam that he hadn't known to prepare for. "I dunno. Application, I guess. My father taught me about strengthening, mostly. I don't really know much of the theory behind it."

The girl looked like she'd just bitten into a lemon, peel, pith, and all. "Strengthening? Seriously? You don't know how to handle the five main elements? How to make a pass?"

Shirou suppressed the urge to tug at his shirt collar. "I don't know what that means." The glare he received could have soured milk and peeled paint from a wall. He shrank away a little, feeling very small.

"But you have a _workshop_, at least." She sounded like a woman grasping desperately for straws.

"I have a workbench and some tools in the shed?" he answered, rubbing the back of his neck.

Tohsaka groaned. Archer spoke up again, and Shirou began to get the feeling that whoever this invisible man was, he did not like him very much. "This is painful. I can't watch this." His voice started to fade, as if he were walking away. "I'm going to go keep watch on the roof. Call me back if you need me."

"Archer!" Her voice seemed genuinely nervous, but the man didn't reply. She looked in the direction the voice had gone for a moment, then shook her head and turned back to Shirou. "Well, I guess you're not going to kill me anyway." She gestured at him. "Anyway, you don't know anything, your teacher sucked, and you're going to die. That's lesson one."

Shirou's blood became ice again. "Die?"

"Yeah, dumbass, die. That's what happens in war."

"War?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't do that."

"What?"

"The broken record thing. I can't stand it. Anyway, yeah. You've… _somehow_ stumbled ass-backwards into a little something called the Holy Grail War. I don't know how that happened, because summoning is a pain in the ass, and very precise, and requires a lot of power." Hm. That was definitely anger in her voice. "So don't ask me what you did, because I've got nothing." She glanced up. "That big scary dude with the sword? That's a Servant. It's like a familiar. Please tell me you know about familiars."

Being able to answer was really a breath of fresh air. "It's a construct, right? Something a mage creates to serve."

She nodded. "Yeah, that's… basically right. A Servant is a really powerful familiar. So powerful that we mages normally wouldn't be able to create one, let alone control it, which is why they only appear under very specific conditions. You see…" Rin proceeded to talk for something like twenty minutes, detailing first Servants, then the Holy Grail (which allowed them to be summoned, and which would grant wishes). She moved on to the Holy Grail War (a seven sided battle to the death, carried out in proxy by servants), and all the ways in which he'd probably die horribly (she lingered on that one for a while). She pointed out the design now inscribed into his hand (a command spell, she called it), as well as its use (to issue three irrevocable orders, one of which he had used to save her life). She kind of seemed like she was enjoying lecturing him, actually, once she settled into it.

Midway through detailing the seven classes (Saber, Lancer, Archer, Assassin, Caster, Rider, Berserker, which he hoped he could keep straight and understood that he'd quickly forget), she paused, frowning. "Anyway, your servant says he's an Assassin. That doesn't make sense, though, because a class is a framework, and your guy doesn't fit the template at all."

"What do you mean?" Shirou's head was kind of spinning. She was throwing a lot at him, and he was still exhausted. He hadn't exactly gotten a full night's five hours of sleep, after all.

"Assassins assassinate. They don't work through brute strength." She pressed her fist to her lips again. "Bring him out?"

"What?"

"Just tell him he can show himself. You don't actually need to do anything."

"**This girl is the enemy. Remember this." **A warning. He'd almost forgotten he was still present.

"But she's helping," Shirou protested. Rin hadn't exactly killed him when she'd very much had the chance and had even put him in bed. She seemed like a good person.

"**Thine ignorance is troubling, but she is not needed to remedy it," **Assassin said in a warning tone. It didn't fill him with comfort to hear.

Rin shrugged, then raised a solemn hand. "Upon my honor as Magus and head of the Tohsaka family, I, Rin, swear that I won't try to hurt him until after I've returned home."

"See?" Shirou said.

"**Art thou a woman of thy word, Rin Tohsaka?" **Before she could answer, Assassin continued. Two points of blue light like eyes appeared, seven or eight feet in the air. "**Do not deceive thyself that thou art proficient enough at the art of lying to hide thyself from me."**

Rin closed her mouth, then regarded the Assassin with the most serious look Shirou had seen from her all morning. "I will do whatever it takes to win The Holy Grail War, but I will not break the word I've freely given." Assassin was silent. Tension built in the room; Shirou could feel it, and he could even see it in the set of Tohsaka's jaw. "So where do we stand? You going to kill me?"

The lights faded away, taking their cold glow with them. "**Interesting."**

Rin shook her head. "What's interesting?"

"**I have seen thy soul, and I believe thee."**

"Just like that?" She didn't quite seem disappointed, but it was close. Shirou didn't really understand, either.

"**Indeed. If the day has come one such as thee can lie to me, then I no longer deserve my titles."**

Rin blinked as though she'd been slapped. "Wha-"

Shirou laughed, and all at once the tension drained out of the room. At Rin's glare, he laughed harder; it felt good after all the heaviness of the last conversation.

"Anyway," she said, looking away, an angry blush on her cheeks. "What I said still stands. I need to see him."

Shirou thought about it for a second, then figured, what the hell. What was the worst that could happen? "Okay, uh. Big scary guy. Sorry, Assassin. Stop being invisible?"

"**At thy command."** Without preamble, without the kind of show he'd been treated to in the shed, Assassin appeared in Shirou's kitchen. He was tall enough that his horned skull and the spikes bristling off of his back brushed the ceiling, and wide enough that he seemed to be taking care not to break anything on the counters. The flaming eyes were fixed at the same point they had been moments before. For the briefest of moments, Shirou wanted to laugh at the sheer incongruity of the image, but then the pain hit. Just like it had been outside once the fog had cleared, his nerves set alight, transmitting raw agony from every one of his cells.

"Emiya!" He was vaguely aware that Rin was kneeling over him, and wondered whether time was actually passing or not. Wait, when did he get down onto the floor? "Go back!" His vision wavered, darkness encroaching on the edges, and now her head was turned, and she was yelling over her shoulder. "Go back to how you were! It's killing him!"

More words. Shouting. A strangled sound that he realized was coming from him. A noise that might have been a bass grumble, and the pain passed all at once. Shirou gasped in a breath, realizing that he hadn't _been _breathing. His body shook a little, but he could see clearly again. "Ow." He blinked up at the ceiling.

Tohsaka touched a finger to his neck, checking his pulse, then leaned in close to see his pupils. "You're alive, right?" She was clearly trying to sound dismissive, but there was an edge of something like worry in her tone that she hadn't completely managed to erase. "What was that? Pain?"

Shirou nodded, distantly noting that he was too dazed to be flustered by how close her face had gotten to his. "Pain. I'm okay, though." He tried to sit up, and she grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him back down.

"You're weak as a kitten right now. Don't be stupid." There was a wrinkle of confusion in her brow. "Pain… That could be a few things, but the way it only hurts when he manifests…" She tilted her head. "It could be that your magic circuits just aren't strong enough to provide the power he needs. Instead of pulling power through you as a conduit, he's just… taking _your _power. Ripping the energy straight out of your circuits."

"**The supply is insufficient," **the voice said in agreement. It kind of hurt Shirou's teeth.

"You said that earlier," he mumbled.

Tohsaka lifted one of his arms, turning it one way and another as if searching for something. He didn't have the energy to stop her. "Where's your crest? That might help me confirm some things."

"My what?"

She let his arm fall to the ground with a thud. He barely felt it. "You really are something, Emiya. Your father was a magus, and he didn't see fit to pass down his crest?"

Shirou shrugged. "I guess?"

She sighed. "This is getting us nowhere, then. I have an idea how we can figure this out, but… damn it, I really didn't want to have to go see him this early."

"Wait, when you say 'we'-"

"Shut up, Emiya. Yeah, looks like we've got no choice. We're going to go see someone as soon as you can walk, and he's a real bastard. Can probably explain things a little better than me, though, and he might have some idea what your…" She wiggled her fingers vaguely at him. "...Deal is."

Shirou struggled to a sitting position, and this time, she didn't try to stop him. "Okay? What do you think, Assassin?" Asking the Servant's opinion was more reflex than anything, but according to Tohsaka, they were partners. He might as well have a say.

"**Ignorance can lead only to disaster. Thou art my contractor, and our destinies are intertwined. If this person can provide answers, then the sojourn may be worth our time." **It was the longest speech the monster had given, and Shirou found that he was almost getting used to that weird reverberation that rattled his teeth and shook his bones. "**If she proves false, however, my blade stands ready. Though it may bring thee pain, she will not take thy life."**

Tohsaka was grimacing as if she had a headache, but Shirou nodded. "Okay. Just don't do anything unless you have no other choice, okay?" Giving commands to something so powerful was surreal, but this was important to him. It was weird how quickly you grew accustomed to the unnatural. "Tohsaka is helping us out, so we should be nice to her back."

"**Understood," **Assassin affirmed, but it sounded like Shirou was being humored more than deferred to.

"Great, cool, you guys are one big happy family," Tohsaka said impatiently. "Now try to stand up. We've got a shitty priest to visit."

* * *

_A/N: Welcome back! After posting the beginning last week, I've gotten more readership than I ever expected, and I'm so happy most of you seem to like what I'm doing! I know I said I'd be posting every other week, but both this chapter and the next will be posted weekly - so stay tuned for another chapter in seven days!_

_Your comments and messages mean a lot to me; thank you so much to all the people who reached out. We're just getting started._


	4. False Idol

_I saw Heaven's Feel on Thursday with my partner in partial cosplay (I was Shirou, they were Rin) and it was the most fun I've had at the movies in a while! My love for Fate/stay night and my love for Sakura Matou are reinvigorated. _

_If y'all are curious, my google doc for this fic is up to about 66k words and 16 chapters in total, so we're not running out any time soon! If that's a third of what this ends up being, I'll eat my own belt. That said, I am gonna go to the every-other-week schedule I mentioned in the first chapter, so expect the next chapter in two weeks._

* * *

The walk was long, though the church wasn't especially far, and Rin put that down mostly to Shirou temporarily being an invalid. Ever since she'd made him bring Assassin out into his physical form, he hadn't been able to do much more than hobble. According to him, it wasn't because moving hurt, but rather because he simply had no strength in any of his limbs. Still, it was a pain in the ass, and she'd ordered Archer to help keep him steady as they walked. Nobody was happier about this than Archer.

"Rin, this is humiliating," her Servant protested. When she'd ordered him to help, she'd expected that he'd do something normal, like putting his arm around Shirou to support him. Archer, instead, had walked up behind him and grabbed a fistful of the back of Shirou's bloodstained white-and-blue shirt. Every time Shirou wavered, Archer gave the shirt a firm tug to right him.

It also seemed to be taking every ounce of willpower the Servant had to not just let the idiot fall.

Rin, meanwhile, was trying not to fume and failing miserably. Every time something like inner peace approached, she'd remember how much _time_ and _effort_ and _preparation_ had gone into her botched summoning of Archer. How much mana she'd stored and burned, how many sleepless nights she'd spent calculating variables, the sheer _willpower_ it had taken to direct the magical energies involved in the ritual. What had Shirou done? He'd gotten stabbed. Anyone could get stabbed. Hell, if it would have worked, she'd have skipped all the hard work and just stabbed herself. Saved some damn time.

And then there was Assassin. It still boggled the mind that anything that powerful could be called an _Assassin_. She'd done a fair bit of research into the Grail War before she'd made her move. She'd read up on each class, its strengths and weaknesses, its tendencies. If anything, when she'd told Shirou that Assassins were weak, she'd _under_sold it. Records of past Grail Wars were spotty. According to Kirei, the last War had been such a debacle that all the surviving Masters refused to speak of it, and what remained from the first three were spotty at best. The records she _could_ find indicated that Assassins had never actually won a one-on-one fight that hadn't been rigged in some way. Masters, they were proficient at killing. Other Servants? There was almost no contest. She'd read analyses by experts in the field of Familiarity. Studies on the vessels the Grail used as frameworks. The precise latticework of power that had been shaped into the Platonic ideal of the Assassin simply should not have been able to sustain the kind of raw power that she'd seen in the fight with Archer.

And Shirou had stumbled into the role of Assassin's master with nothing more than a cute butt, a hole in his chest, and a dopey look on his face. Then she'd think about how hard she'd worked again, and the cycle would start anew.

Definitely not fuming.

Mostly, they walked in silence, broken by short bursts of conversation. In a stronger voice, Shirou asked, "What happened to, uh, the guy with the spear?"

Rin hissed in a sharp breath. "So Lancer _was _there?" In all the confusion and lecturing, she'd forgotten to check. "Assassin, did you kill him?"

"**He yet draws breath. Our weapons clashed but twice before he withdrew. I would have given chase, but I sensed thy Archer's approach and determined that I should not leave my Contractor undefended."**

"That was probably the right move," Shirou replied, nodded vaguely in her direction. "He definitely wanted me dead, and Tohsaka wasn't helping me yet. I passed out right before all that happened, though."

"If he'd gone after Lancer, you'd probably be dead," Rin said bluntly.

"I'm glad I'm not," he said earnestly.

When they reached their destination, she stopped to allow Shirou a moment to breathe. They stood outside the gates of a great western-style church that loomed up into the blackness of night. She was supposed to know the denomination, but frankly, she cared so little about what the false priest claimed to believe that she'd never bothered to remember. It was all just The Church to her.

Shirou looked up at it, slapping Archer's hand away from his back. There was something like grim determination on his face. He probably thought he looked nice and heroic, but he was brittle. At least he seemed able to stand on his own, now. "So he's in there?"

Rin nodded. "He's a priest. Kirei Kotomine. Also, he's the supervisor of this Grail War."

"The war has a supervisor?"

"Of course it does. _Someone _has to make sure it isn't compromised, and that too much attention isn't drawn by the combatants." She launched into another lecture on what she understood of the Church and its role in all this. Before too long though, she found herself interrupted.

"**This is no house of Allah."** Assassin's voice came from unnervingly close. If he'd been manifested, he'd have been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her. (Or, well, shoulder-to-elbow, she supposed. Elbow-to-waist? He loomed large in her memory). His voice, painful to hear though it was, sounded surprisingly pensive.

Shirou looked up into the empty air. "It's not a real church?" His gaze turned back to the ominous steeple looming against the night. "Looks like one to me."

"**A church is a building. A mosque is a building. A shrine is a building. Stone and brick and mud molded into something the builders profess to be piety. Stone cannot believe. Walls cannot bear faith alone." **Pensive, shifting into quiet disdain. "**A house of Allah is defined not by the shape it is given nor the name it is assigned. A house of Allah is made manifest by the people within."**

"What do you believe, then?" Shirou seemed genuinely curious. It was like he'd forgotten where he was, or what he was talking to. He was like a distractible puppy.

"**I believe in Him,"** he said, as if that explained everything.

Rin rolled her eyes, but Shirou leaned closer. "Yeah, but like… there's a lot of kinds of God, right?" In his interest, he'd moved a little too close to Rin for comfort, so she gave him a gentle shove back to where he'd been standing. He stumbled back as though she'd decked him, and shot her a glare.

"**Religion speaks nothing more than words. Attempts to encapsulate the Divine into a form that the mortal, conscious mind can comprehend. God, Allah, the Root that magi worship. All aspects of the same divine spark. There are more facets to the face of Allah than grains of sand in all the deserts in all the world combined." **It wasn't a lecture, nor was room left in his tone for debate. It was a simple statement of fact, and they could accept it or not.

It was an interesting perspective, but Rin felt herself gearing up to argue with the big scary skull man. The Root was not something so petty as a _god_, nor did mages _worship_ it. She opened her mouth to say so, but she paused when Archer put a hand on her shoulder. "Rin, we came here for a reason. Let's get the kid some answers and go home. I will remind you again that this is _war_, and every bit of information our enemy has is a potential sword to be used against us."

Rin grimaced. He was right, and she didn't want him to be. She was procrastinating having to go talk to Kirei.

She _really _didn't want to go talk to Kirei.

Assassin continued as if he'd never stopped speaking. "**What dwells within the church is not a man of God. It is a presence I recognize. What dwells within is barely a man at all." **There was something like a tired sigh in the air. "**I will remain outside."**

"Holy ground?" Shirou asked, in what he surely thought was a helpful tone.

"**This ground is sanctified, but it is not holy. No. If I meet the priest that dwells within, I will be dutybound to kill him. Unfortunately, it is also a breach of duty to bring harm to an appointed neutral supervisor, and so I will remain without. Nonetheless, should danger present itself, call out, and I shall hear thy voice. My justice will be swift."**

Shirou blinked. "Okay."

Rin kind of wanted to see Kirei with that giant sword in his chest, and the thought made her smile.

* * *

"Shirou… Emiya." A look of something unreadable flickered over the priest's face, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. A narrowing of the eyes, a tension in the forehead. An emptiness. In its place was a gregarious smile, a sweeping bow just exaggerated enough to make Shirou wonder if it was intended to be mocking. "I thank you, Emiya. You have brought Rin here. If it were not for you, she would not have come. I have been trying to contact her for days, you see."

"You just don't like being hung up on," Tohsaka muttered, shifting until she stood shoulder to shoulder with him, her chin raised as if they were defiant children about to be scolded for stealing cookies.

"Then let us start," Kotomine said, and placed a heavy hand on Shirou's shoulder. Weakened as he was, he needed to focus to keep his knees from buckling. "Shirou Emiya, you are Assassin's master, correct?"

If there was a human being anywhere on planet Earth that loved the sound of their own voice more than Tohsaka apparently did, it was Kirei Kotomine. He had a deep, musical voice, and he used it to drone on and on about the minutiae of the Holy Grail War. Shirou's focused waned. His mind drifted. He couldn't help it. This was just interminable.

Also, every time Kotomine said his name, he said his whole name. It was grating. He hadn't even done anything particularly shitty, and yet, Shirou found himself agreeing with Tohsaka's assessment of him as a bastard.

"Assassin's presence causes you pain?" Father Kotomine asked thoughtfully. He spread his arms wide, ambiguous. "I would know little more than Rin, of course, as my knowledge of the Art is limited, but I believe her theory is correct. You are simply insufficient as a Master. Rin is resourceful, however. I'm sure a workaround will be found."

As the conversation continued, however, a coiled anger grew within his chest. A fight to the death. Collateral damage. The careless way in which Father Kotomine described horrors, as if he were speaking of things no more distressing than a cloudy day at a picnic.

Still — all this was so _wrong_. Why should he participate in something so meaningless and cruel? He didn't want any such thing as the Holy Grail, and he was barely something that could be called a Master in the first place.

The priest nodded understandingly. "So you are not concerned about what the winner of the Holy Grail would do, even if it leads to disaster?"

Disaster? "That's-" Shirou's mind had suddenly gone uncomfortably blank. _Disaster_.

"That is fine, if you have no reason to fight," Kirei said in a sympathetic tone, the way you might tell a kid that he doesn't have to play a game with his friends if he doesn't want to. "But," Kirei continued heavily, sadly. "I suppose that means that you are not troubled by what happened ten years ago.

The disaster ten years ago.

_blood on his hands fire all around him the screams of his parents(not his real parents because he knows his father) (what did they look like before they were nothing but char and smoke?) and the screams of strangers (friends) and pain and choking and the cool feeling of rain on a burn and _

_the desperate joy on kiritsugu's face_

Shirou didn't collapse, but that was only through sheer force of stubborn will. He sat upon one of the pews, rage so deep he couldn't think, nausea so overwhelming that he couldn't speak. Rin went to him with a look of concern. With a halting, hesitant motion, she placed a hand on his shoulder. "Emiya…?"

He tried to wave her away, but he was shaking so badly. When his fingers brushed her wrist, his fingers wrapped around it, rather than pushing it away. His teeth chattered and

_fire burning burning burning suffocating_

he could feel his eyes jittering. Tohsaka didn't pull away. Later, he would realize that this was the moment when Tohsaka truly, irrevocably proved herself to be a good person in his eyes. He held her wrist so tightly, so desperately, that it must have hurt. Later, he'd notice the subtle bruise in the shape of his

_broken screaming choking _

fingers. And still, she didn't yank her hand away, or yell, or hit him. She didn't even flinch.

She stood silently with her hand on his shoulder.

His breath came in ragged gasps. Eventually, each was slower than the last. Eventually, he didn't feel as though he was

_choking on the smoke_

struggling to catch his breath. He glanced up at Tohsaka. Her brows were knit together in concern, and she was biting her lip. Sheepishly, realizing what he was doing, he released his grip. His knuckles creaked with tension.

"Emiya…" Her voice was softer now than he'd ever heard her. Every trace of superiority, of haughtiness, was gone, at least for the moment. "Are you okay? You're white as a ghost." When he didn't respond, she sighed quietly, but there was no irritation in it. "We can rest a while, if you'd like."

Shirou smiled shakily, and hoped he didn't look as pathetic as he felt. "Don't worry. I feel better after seeing your weird face."

Her face fell into one of suspicion. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, her voice now less than tender.

"I meant it literally." He raised his hands in surrender, and they still shook. "No hidden intentions. I feel better."

"Well, I guess that's…" She frowned, the gears visibly turning in her head. "No, wait. That's definitely worse." Every hint of compassion gone, she leaned closer and slapped the back of his head hard enough to make his vision blur.

When it cleared, he actually felt like himself again. "Thanks, Tohsaka. That helped too."

She looked at him like he'd grown an extra set of ears.

"You did! No need to keep bullying me. There's some more I need to ask."

She looked at him like she hadn't decided whether or not she'd hit him enough yet.

The priest laughed, standing exactly where he had been this whole time. Shirou couldn't tell whether it was genuine, or whether he was being laughed at. It seemed to change from moment to moment. "You still have questions, then?"

The lecture continued. Shirou regretted that he hadn't let it end, but at the same time, he needed as much forewarning as he could get his hands on.

Then the life seemed to leave Kotomine's eyes, and his gaze grew hard. "Tell me your decision, Shirou Emiya. Will you fight?"

Shirou's mouth opened, but he didn't know what to say. Rin was frowning beside him, and it seemed like there was something she wanted him to say, but he couldn't tell what it was.

"After all this, you are undecided?" Where there had been questionable joviality in his voice before, now it was cold and clinical. No longer discussing the weather; now he was talking dispassionately about ridding his home of an insect infestation. "A Master is not something you can be just because you want to. Rin," and he gestured to her with one hand, "has been training as a mage her whole life, and yet, it was never a certainty that she would be able to become a Master. All she could do was prepare, and to hope that the Grail would choose her." A smile spread across his lips, and there was an open cruelty to it that Shirou had only previously suspected. "Only magi are to be chosen as Masters. If you are truly a magus, you should have been prepared, Shirou Emiya. If you say you are not, then… well, it cannot be helped. You and your teacher were merely failures. For you to fight would be nothing more than an annoyance, and the right thing for you to do would be to surrender your command spell. Retire from the battle."

Shirou felt himself sweating. Rin was mouthing something at him. Kotomine was smiling that cruel smile. He opened his mouth, but until the words actually left his mouth, he had no idea what he would say. "I won't run away." The words emboldened him, and he stood as tall as he could, shoulders proudly back. "I will fight as a Master. If the fire ten years ago was because of the War, then I can't let it happen again."

Rin sagged, though whether in relief or disappointment, Shirou wasn't sure. Maybe both. For a long moment, the priest didn't move. Finally, though, his smile grew to encompass his whole face, and he brought his hands together in front of him. "In that case, as supervisor, I officially witness and approve of you as Assassin's master. And with that, all seven Servants are summoned, all seven Masters verified. The war begins now." With a condescending hand, he ruffled Shirou's hair. "Good luck, Shirou _Emiya_."

* * *

They rejoined Archer and Assassin, and began the trek back to Shirou's home. He was tired to his bones, but there was no way to sleep until he was home. Tohsaka's home was much closer, she said, but she wasn't going to allow him to "bleed all over my stuff," so they were going back to Shirou's.

The world was lightening now, the first hazy blues and oranges appearing in the pre-dawn sky. This part of Fuyuki, where the church stood, remained quiet. They walked in silence. Shirou was strong enough to walk at a normal pace, now, and he didn't need Archer's help to keep upright. That was good, because as they walked, he was pretty sure he could feel Archer's gaze boring into his defenseless back like a dog being held back from a big, juicy steak. It was irritating.

"**Thy decision has been made, then?" **

Shirou nodded. "Yeah. You probably already knew I was going to, but I'm going to fight."

"**I believed that this would be thy choice, but I was not entirely sure."**

Their footsteps clicked quietly in the early haze. "Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"**I have not yet determined the answer to that question," **Assassin replied bluntly. "**But for the time being, thou art my contractor. We share the same goal."**

"Well, I guess I'll just have to show you that I can be just as good a Master as anyone," Shirou said lightly.

"**The world is a place of infinite wonders," **Assassin replied cryptically. Shirou didn't know how to respond to that, so he let the conversation lapse into silence.

They hadn't gone nearly far enough when Rin froze; at the same moment pain pulsed through the back of his hand, where his command spell had been burned into his skin. In a blink, Archer was standing before them, twin swords of white and black in his hands. Before Shirou could be too distracted by that, though, he heard something drifting in the breeze. A melody, carried on a voice high and childish. It sounded like a lullaby. If not that, something light and airy. He couldn't make out the words, but the song grew louder as the singer approached.

"What-" Shirou started to ask, but Rin clamped a hand over his mouth and shook her head. Her eyes were wide, and they darted back and forth, searching.

The song grew louder, and Shirou realized that it wasn't a language he knew. German? Maybe German. He was trying to puzzle that one out, when the second monster he'd seen that night appeared.

From an alley before them emerged a giant. Taller even than Assassin, Shirou thought, but without even a scrap of armor to artificially inflate the silhouette. His skin was a strange, stony brown, as if he'd been roughly hewn, fully formed, from rock rather than born. His eyes were a dull red, and a mane of thick black hair swirled around his head. In one hand, he lazily dragged a sword that was big and broad enough that Shirou's brain couldn't decide whether it _was_ a sword, or if it was just a club carved to look like one. In the end, it wouldn't matter; that thing would be equally deadly. Steam hissed from the giant's mouth with every breath, and every step shook the ground. An invisible miasma of death followed him, the same way it followed Assassin.

And yet, the strangest thing about the discordant image was the girl perched comfortably on the giant's shoulder. She was bundled up in expensive-looking purple and silver winter clothes, her small hands clasped before her in black gloves. A strange flat cap sat atop her head. She was as pale as anyone Shirou had ever seen, with long flowing hair that was a brilliant, unnatural silver. Her eyes were shut, and she sang with a smile on her face.

Shirou had met this girl once before, just a day or two ago. That brief encounter was beginning to make a little more sense.

"Berserker," Archer hissed, his grip on his swords tightening. His voice was high and tight. "Your orders, Rin?"

"**This foe is beyond thee," **came Assassin's voice. "**Do not fight him head-on. Use the shadows. Find the beast's blind spot, and capitalize upon its weakness. There is nothing on this Earth that is truly invincible."**

"I have fought battles before, Bones," Archer said drily. "I think I know what to do."

"**Hmm."**

Shirou broke in, speaking through the lump in his throat. "Maybe she just wants to talk." She'd seemed like a sweet girl, if a little strange, when they'd met. Implied threat notwithstanding.

Rin glared at him, but before she could retort, the little girl spoke in a high, clear voice. "Good morning, onii-chan. It's nice to see you again." Her eyes opened to reveal irises of deep, crimson red. She blinked, and her smile was warm. "You made me wait longer than I thought I'd have to."

The fear was filling his body again, charging every fiber of his being with the urge to run. No, she wasn't here to talk. Not riding on the shoulder of something like that. Berserker. A Heroic Spirit granted immense strength and speed, at the cost of its mind. Could Assassin fight that? Shirou didn't know. He'd only briefly even _seen_ his Servant.

Power for power, this thing might have the edge.

Rin had her hands in her pockets, standing casually. Now that she knew where the threat was, it seemed that she could at least pretend to relax. "Isn't it past your bedtime, kid?"

The girl frowned, almost pouting. "I don't have a bedtime. And it's morning." The childishness just didn't fit with the image of the monster she was perched on.

Rin blinked.

The girl smiled again, and Berserker lifted a massive hand beside her, palm up. She grabbed hold of it with her arms, and he gingerly lowered her to the ground. She stood straight, dusted herself off, and curtseyed deeply. "Nice to meet you, Rin. I am Illya." When Rin didn't react to the name, Illya continued. "If I say Illyasviel von Einzbern, you should be able to figure it out."

That _did_ get a reaction. Tohsaka jumped. "Einzbern…?"

A old man's voice like rustling, dead leaves. _More importantly, Shirou Emiya. Is the daughter of the Einzberns doing well? _

Illya frowned, her gaze sliding to Shirou. "Where's your Servant, onii-chan? I wanted to meet them." The frown became a narrow-eyed smile. "Unless you haven't managed it, yet. I did warn you, didn't I?"

Once more feeling as though he were in a dream, and sliding slightly into autopilot, he said, "Oh, Assassin's here. He can't come out to play, though."

Tohsaka punched him in the arm, hissing. "Why would you tell her that, numbskull?"

Archer stepped forward. "Rin, go. I can cover you long enough for you to get away." Even Shirou could see that this terrain did not favor an Archer. It was too small, too enclosed. Buildings on every side. It would be hard to get enough distance to fire a bow.

Illya pushed her lower lip out. "I don't care about Archer. I wanted to kill Shirou's Servant first…" She sighed, then clapped her hands once. Her face lit up in a bright, cheery smile, bursting with life. Shirou smiled back out of sheer reflex, but then Illya spoke again in a childish singsong voice. "Guess it can't be helped. Kill them, Berserker."

The giant roared, bursting windows all around them rained glass down onto the street, and the world went mad.


	5. Sides of the Coin

_I know I keep saying I'm gonna go to posting every other week, but fuck it, this is a weekly story now. Expect it every Sunday._

_I'm sorry this isn't the Berserker fight, but that whole thing will be next week! Promise!_

_Also, shoutout for KhaosKhan for all the help with background information and Assassin character stuff!_

* * *

This Grail War had potential, but at the moment, it was mostly just boring. He'd scouted most of the competition, and while some were a bit more interesting than others, most of them seemed to present the promise of a worthwhile battle.

Too bad his Master had specifically instructed him not to go all out.

Lancer was not a man who did things by half. He'd never pulled a punch a day in his life, and he'd never been particularly shy about taking a hit. The order that bastard had given to battle each of the enemy Servants in turn, but not to the death, was a travesty. No, it was worse than that. An insult. That cocky Archer in red could have been the fight he'd been searching for - if he'd been allowed to _have _it. Lancer enjoyed an easy win as much as the next guy, but fights where you and the other guy were evenly matched were the best kind of fight.

Saber was a pushover. Caster was cruel and powerful, but not particularly interesting. Berserker was a monster, but Lancer knew how to fight smart, and Gae Bolg never missed the heart. He'd run each battle in his head, and he was pretty confident that he could win a fight with any of them.

The problem, at the moment, was Assassin. Lancer often fancied himself a man without fear, but that wasn't entirely true. Lancer got scared all the time, but that was part of what it meant to be a human. Courage was not whether you got scared or not; it was about how one dealt with it. Normally, a condescending smile and a sharp tongue were all he needed to keep it at bay. The night before, however, the sight of that hulking, armored brute had filled him with a primal terror he was neither familiar nor comfortable with. Sure, he'd retreated from the other battles, but only because those were his orders. When Assassin came for him, he'd run with his tail between his legs. That stung his pride, once he'd found himself removed enough from the situation to view it objectively. He couldn't trust any of the other Servants to solve that problem for him. It would come down to a fight, and it would take everything Lancer possessed to come out on top.

Now, there was only one name left to cross off his list. Rider. Kotomine had not seen fit to give Lancer any details, but he seemed to know with some certainty who the Master was. A little ball of grease named Shinji Matou, a wannabe mage with a chip the size of Ireland on his shoulder. As the priest had given him the tip, he'd been sitting atop the back of a pew, his feet on the bench. His spear leaned idly against his thigh. "That's all?"

Kotomine had smirked enigmatically. "That's all you need to know to accomplish your task. Your assessment of their abilities will be more accurate without preconceived notions clouding your judgement."

Lancer was pretty sure he was being toyed with, and he didn't like it. "Alright, Father," he said airily. "Not my fault if I get whipped because you didn't want me to be prepared."

That infuriating smile only grew. "Oh, I think that will not be an issue. You are the strongest Servant there is, are you not? I don't associate with weaklings or cowards."

From where he was perched presently, high in the branches of an old, dying tree, he snorted quietly. "Bastard." A ways down the street, there was an old, western-style mansion that he was staking out. The Matou household, he'd been told. From what Kotomine had said, he thought grudgingly, this Shinji kid was the kind of person who would be too excited to play with his new toys to bother laying low. Still, he remained on his guard. Shinji might be an idiot, but that didn't mean his Servant would be.

The sun had risen by the time the door opened. Lancer tensed, ready to move if he needed to. He was hidden well, and his eyesight was far better than an average human, so he wasn't too worried. The Servant would be the first one out, though, and that was who he needed to see.

That wasn't what actually happened, though. The person that emerged was pale, greasy, and hunched. He was freshly bathed, but that seemed to have done little to improve his nasty mop of purple hair, but maybe that was just his miasma. He held a hand to his forehead to block out the morning sun, then surveyed the area.

"That's Shinji?" Lancer muttered to himself. "Looks like a strong breeze would kick his ass."

Shinji also hadn't done a very good job surveying the area, because he shot a nervous glance behind him, nodding to someone Lancer couldn't see. He flinched, as if expecting a blow, and moved quickly out of the way.

What emerged was Lancer's worst possible nightmare.

The girl that strode haughtily out of the mansion wasn't tall, nor did she radiate physical strength, but her presence was instantly commanding. She expected the world to obey, and so it would. Pink hair flowed around her like a cloak made of water, caressing her thighs, which were bare. It was the dead of winter, here in Fuyuki, and the girl was wearing what could only be described as lingerie of purest white, complimented by a pointy tiara above her brow. One hand gripped a riding crop, gently tapping the painful end gently onto the other. An implied threat.

He knew her true name at a glance. Queen Medb of Connacht. Wicked, cruel, lustful. A hedonist of the most hungry kind. A despicable woman who lived only for herself, taking and taking and taking until there was no more for her to take, then moving on to the next obsession. He knew her well. He was one of those obsessions.

No wonder that bastard had seemed to be laughing at him. He _had_ been.

And as if thinking her name had rung a gong, her head snapped to stare in his direction. No, not in his direction. At him. Like a young girl handed a puppy she had not expected, her face lit up into a radiant smile. Sweat seemed to freeze on his brow, and every muscle he had screamed to either kill her or flee from her. He could do neither.

"Cu!" She stepped forward, and it was almost a skip, her musical voice cutting the air like a knife. "Cu, it's me!" Her master, Shinji, was wringing his hands nervously, as if he expected to be beaten. Knowing the identity of his Servant, he could only imagine what horrors she'd wrought upon the poor boy. The only thing that would spare him the brunt of her affection was that he was already pretty weak and spineless. Medb had no interest in such men. "What did I tell you? I knew you'd come back to me."

The cat was out of the bag, so Lancer leapt down from his perch, landing lightly on his feet. "If I'd known you'd be here, I'd have put my lance through my own heart days ago."

From down the street, she approached, her steps slowing to something a little more languid. Catlike. "Oh, so you're here as a Lancer, huh?" She blinked innocently. "How appropriate. Lancing was always what you were best at."

Lancer forced himself forward, ignoring all the raging emotions boiling within him. There was only one person who could trigger something so powerful, and she was standing right in front of him. "Not that you'd know anything about that," he retorted, and he thought he was doing an admirable job of keeping his tone light.

"Oh, but what better time than the present?" She flicked her wrist, and her crop came to rest on one smooth shoulder. "Stick your lance in me, and we'll see who comes out on top."

This was every conversation with the damn woman. She had no idea how to speak without innuendo or suggestion. She did it the way most girls he'd known breathed air. "Are we going to fight, or are you going to sit here and make doe eyes at me like a virgin until I get bored and stab you anyway?"

Medb came to a halt ten feet or so from him. Her smile widened, and that expression on just about anyone else would have been beautiful. On her? It filled him with fear. "Oh, I know you like to play hard to get, Cu." She tilted her head at him. "What's your master like? Mine isn't any fun at all." Lancer glanced behind her, and saw Shinji standing back by the gate to his home, hunched over as if something that weighed a few hundred pounds were sitting on his back. His eyes darted back and forth between them as he wrung his hands. "I can't stand men like him. He calls himself my master, but I think we both know who's in charge here." She winked at him. "About all he's good for is fetching me things. And being a footstool. You know, for someone so spineless, he really does have a very strong back."

"Congratulations," he said, overflowing with as much sarcasm as he could pack into one word.

"Thank you! It really wasn't very hard." She leaned in conspiratorially. "You know, he thought that being a Servant meant that he could just do whatever he wanted to me. Me!" She dissolved into giggles, wiping at her eyes. "I told him that if he ever used a Command Seal on me in a way that I didn't like, I'd break every bone in his body." She moved closer still. Ten feet. "I don't think he believed me, though, so I snapped a couple fingers to show him I was serious." As if she were describing a particularly funny way a pet had misbehaved.

Cu glanced back down the road. Shinji had the demeanor, and one of his hands _did _look a little swollen. "Did you?"

She nodded cheerfully. "Oh, yes. Also, I said that if he looked at his sister any kind of way I didn't like, I'd break every bone in his body. Little creep."

"A fountain of creativity, you are." He was getting antsy. If she didn't attack soon, he would. He had a vague idea of how strong Medb had been in a fight, but this wasn't Queen Medb, the human being. This was Queen Medb, Heroic Spirit, a Servant empowered by the Grail. It wouldn't compare.

"I know, I know, but I had a point to make." She shrugged widely, pouting a little. "It only takes a second to use a Command Seal, so I had to be clear really quickly." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't think he's figured out that he could use a Command Seal to order me not to hurt him. He's not very smart." Laughter bubbled out of her again. "So what about yours?"

Lancer dropped into a combat stance, spear aimed at her heart. "I'd rather be talking to him than you. Personality is trash but he's easier on the eyes."

Medb rolled her eyes. "Not much for foreplay, are you? Alright, alright." She didn't move, or seem to prepare in any way. "You need to learn to loosen up, Cu. Get that stick out of your ass."

Lancer didn't like the person he became around her. He would have cheerfully agreed that many insults applied to him, but she was the only one who could get away with something like 'stick in the mud.' Instead of responding, he went for her heart. He closed the distance between them fast, spear rising to strike low to high. Her crop moved at the same instant he did, smacking the lance down as if it were made of iron instead of leather. The momentum carried him forward, past her, and he threw out an elbow as he went. It crashed into her ribs with a quiet grunt, but this was part of her plan, it seemed. Her hand, balled into an unladylike fist, took him in the jaw, sending him staggering back.

"Rider, look out!" Shinji cried unhelpfully in the distance.

"Cu, do you know how many times I've watched you fight?" She danced from one heel to the other, grinning as if this were nothing more than a friendly boxing match between old friends. "The way your hands grip the shaft. The way your muscles move and dance. The way you think." She blew him a sensual kiss. "And, despite my more than generous offers, how many times have you seen me fight?"

She never stopped talking. Kotomine should have stolen _her_, Lancer thought petulantly. They'd be perfect for each other.

A flurry of blows, each one deflected or dodged. It was like fighting smoke. Every now and then, Medb let him score a hit, but it was always something inconsequential, and always something that opened him up to counterattack. She wasn't kidding. She seemed to know every move he made, before he made it. "Face it, Cu. You don't know what I'm capable of." Her grin was wicked. "And that scares you, because you can't prepare for it." She considered him. "Fear is a good look on you, Cu. I'd like to see it more often." She lunged for him, going on the offensive for the first time.

His spear gave him reach, and it gave him precision, but it was unwieldy in tight spaces. The street was wide open, but she had slipped through his guard in an instant. _Thud thud_, he deflected a pair of punches, but staggered as the crop cracked him across the face. The pain was greater than it should have been, as if the leather were laced with broken glass and bits of jagged metal. He had to be bleeding already. The world spun, and she gave no quarter. One, two, three hits to the face, four to his side. If he'd been mortal, his ribs would have shattered, but as he was, they just hurt like a son of a bitch. Her leg swept out and took him in the ankles, dumping him to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

His head cracked the ground, and he groaned. He had thoughts about this. Mostly things along the lines of _What the hell? _The fact of the matter was, he hadn't wanted to fight. He hadn't wanted to hurt her, and he didn't know _why_. He hated her. He was scared of her. "Is this about the thing with your handmaid?" he groaned, trying to twist onto his knees.

"I don't even remember what you're talking about. I _am _still mad about my poor pet stoat though," she lilted at him, then drove her heel repeatedly into his belly as he doubled over, coughing. The moment his eyes closed, she reared back and kicked the side of his head like a football, whipping his neck to the side. Why? Why did she hold such power over him? It wasn't just that he'd underestimated her. His heart hadn't been in the fight. The pain was incredible, and the beating interminable. Shame burned in his gut as he raised his hands to guard his face, and as she rained blows down onto him. An ignoble end to what could have been a glorious war. Beaten to death by a woman he couldn't bear to see and couldn't bear to kill.

Eventually, Lancer realized the beating had stopped. The world spun, and she'd kicked him onto his back. Awareness returned. Medb was kneeling beside him, breathing heavy with a crimson face, and Lancer wasn't at all convinced that that was just exhaustion. She looked down at him with what could only be adoration, smiling widely, without guile. "You're beautiful like this, Cu." Her finger trailed across his cheek, down his neck, and he didn't have the strength to pull away. "Bloody and bruised. But it would be prettier if you'd earned it." Her slender hand wrapped around his throat. "You let me win." The hand tightened, and as he struggled to pull in a breath, she leaned in close, so close that her breath tickled his lips. "You'll be mine, Cu Chulainn. Mind, body, and soul. But that will not happen until you show me the respect I deserve, and when you do not go _easy_ _on me_." Quiet rage dripped from her words. Without letting go, she kissed him, her lips soft and tender on his. She smelled of strawberries, intermingled with the taste of blood that was entirely his. Her lips left his at the same time she slackened her grip, and he gasped in a breath. Her small smile was wistful. "I love you, Cu. Try again sometime."

She left him there, lying in the street, staring up at a sky quickly growing blue. Shinji's voice drifted to him from down the street, halting and nervous. "Aren't you going to kill him?"

Medb's voice was airy. "He's not ready, yet. His life belongs to me, now, and he knows it. Don't question me."

Lancer lay there for a long time, halfway hoping another Servant would come along while he was weak to finish him off.

His shitty rank-E luck wouldn't even allow him to _die_ properly. Eventually, when the sun was higher in the sky, he stood and limped off to report to Kotomine, and to lick his wounds.

* * *

The world was unrecognizable, but only on the outside. Within, the same hearts of man beat within the same constructs of blood and flesh, with the same selfish desires and hypocritical ideals. No matter what the carts looked like, people were people.

The city was chaotic, but Ryuudou Temple was tranquil, this early in the morning. Young Issei was inside, busying about with chores and duties related to his position, and Souichirou was methodically getting ready for his day job. When Caster stood out here in the cool dawn air, watching the sun rise through the trees, she was alone. Her black jacket rustled in the wind, her hands in her pockets. A bird flittered down a dozen feet away, hopping twice and pecking intensely at something on the ground. A worm, maybe, or something tasty that a visitor had dropped. She watched it work, silent. It's head shot up with something like fear or frustration, and it's small beady eyes fastened on her. She didn't move. It regarded her for a long few moments, curious, before taking off and disappearing back into the trees.

Caster watched it go.

"It's time," an uninflected voice said from behind her. She turned, smiling up at the tall, grave man that stood there. Before she'd died, she'd stopped smiling altogether. Now, it felt almost natural again. "I'm ready to go."

"I'll walk with you," she said. She stepped closer, taking his huge, cool hand in hers. His fingers responded in kind, though his face remained impassive as ever.

"Are you sure? The temple-"

"Is protected," she said firmly. "My workshop will not be breached."

Souichirou Kuzuki's heavy gaze rested down the long set of stone stairs that was the only entrance to the temple. "You have confidence in her ability?"

Caster nodded. "She is far weaker than a Servant should be, yes, but there are more factors at play than raw power." She looked down as well, and thought she could make the girl out in the distance, sitting on a step and gazing out at what she could see of the world. "The terrain favors the defender, and her sword is well-suited to a tight battlefield. Also, she does not need to _kill_ the Servants that approach. Her purpose is to delay, until I can join the battle, and she has already rebuffed both Lancer and Rider."

He blinked slowly behind his glasses. To one not intimately familiar with him, Kuzuki seemed a man who was either perpetually angry or bored, depending on the mood of the observer. In the still lines of his face, she saw something approaching concern. "You sound unconvinced."

She grimaced. "When I summoned her, she was meant to be disposable. Little more than a construct. I knew the summoning would be imperfect, and so I didn't expect… someone like her."

"A child." It wasn't a question.

"She isn't a child," Caster said dismissively, but it rang false even to her own ears. A justification. "She is a tool."

"As you say."

They stood there, for a moment, and she rested the side of her head gently against his arm. It was tight with muscle, and bony beneath, but she found it comfortable nevertheless. She sighed, almost content. Another might have said he was merely tolerating the touch, given his lack of reciprocation, but again, she knew better. The fact that he allowed it at all _was_ reciprocation. She'd had enough of touchy-feely love from the men in her life. "Come. You'll be late," she said finally, breaking the silence. "You have an image to maintain."

He nodded agreeably, and they started down the stairs.

Saber was sitting, as Caster had thought, her hands in her lap. Gold hair pulled back from her like a reluctant crown, though one floppy cowlick refused to submit to any kind of styling. Her sword rested comfortably across her thighs-Caliburn, it was called, Caster thought idly, and her pretty white-and-black dress was untouched by the dirt and dust around her. As they passed, Saber's gaze shifted to her, and her wide eyes were sad. "You're going out?"

Caster hesitated, and Kuzuki slowed to a stop without prompting. "Yes, I am. Kuzuki has school, and I'm going to survey the area. There were strange bursts of power, last night, and the final Servants may have entered the fight."

Saber considered this, then nodded slowly. "I see." She pointed off into the distance. "I did see something weird, last night. Things got really dark, over there. Like there was a shadow from a cloud, but last night was clear, other than the fog this morning."

Caster nodded. "That's the right direction, then. You may be right." It was about as close to praise as she would allow herself to get.

The young girl forced a smile. She couldn't be more than fifteen, but the uncertainty in her bearing and her wide eyes made her look even younger. Caster reminded herself that age was irrelevant, and that a Heroic Spirit was a Heroic Spirit, no matter how damaged their Spirit Origin might be from an imperfect summoning. Weak souls did not become Heroic. "Do you think I could come with you?" A familiar tone. Hopefulness, without hope.

Caster shook her head. "Your summoning is bound to the temple grounds. Even if I were to use a Command Seal, your mana supply would cease the moment you left." Her voice was like ice. "You do not possess a talent for Independent Action. You would not last long."

The girl sagged barely enough for Caster to notice. "I understand." She was still smiling, but it was strained.

Something tugged at Caster's chest, but she forced the strange sensation down. A tool was a tool. You didn't show a tool around the city to make it happy, or praise a tool. It did the job it was created to do, or it was replaced. That's all there was.

Saber was here to guard the entrance to the temple. The rest of the world was irrelevant. The way she felt was irrelevant. If Saber truly felt anything at all; this all might be nothing more than a remnant of the damaged template Caster had used to summon her. She might well be an automaton of magic, feigning true awareness. An echo of something once felt.

There was nothing to say. Caster turned away from the girl and resumed her descent. The conversation was over, and pleasantries were unnecessary. Kuzuki followed silently.

"Master?" Tentative. Tired. A little afraid.

Caster didn't respond, but she did pause, feet on two different steps.

"When you come back…" A hesitation. "Do you think you could bring me something to eat?"

"Servants do not require food to replenish their mana. You draw from the ley lines all around you, and that should be more than enough." Her voice took on a note of warning that surprised even her. "Are you saying the ley line is not supplying the mana you need?"

She could almost hear the flinch. "No, I just…"

"Just?" She turned back, hardening her gaze. It wasn't easy. That surprised her. It had been a long time since she'd been the kind of woman who wasn't willing to do what was necessary to accomplish her goals. Babying a weapon would only weaken its resolve.

Saber was hunched in on herself, and though her voice was meek, there was no shimmer of tears in her eyes. That was good. She was growing stronger, then. "It's… just something I used to love. Before. Food. I… I miss it." She drew her knees to her chest, as much as she could on the step, and wrapped her arms around them. "Never mind, Master. It was a stupid question."

"It was," Caster said, simply.

Saber was silent the rest of the way down the stairs, and Caster did not look back. She would afford the girl that dignity, at least.

Kuzuki eyed her as they walked. Not speaking, but also seeming to want something. She sighed. "What?" she demanded, a little harder than she meant to.

"You see her as a tool," he said. She grimaced, but she took his hand regardless. "I do not think you are wrong to consider her so." He was quiet for another moment, contemplative. He was a thoughtful man, though he didn't look it. "However, tools require maintenance. Sharpening. Polishing. A tool that has been neglected is worth less than nothing."

"And you think I'm neglecting my tools?" A challenge.

Souichirou shrugged his shoulders. "I am no magician. The nature of familiars is not my area of expertise." He'd never called her a witch. She'd never even needed to ask him not to. "But your tool is notched. It has not been sharpened. When you will need to rely on it most, if it is in its current state, it will break, and there will be backlash."

Caster was silent. High above, a flock of birds soared in a V formation. The birds hadn't changed much, either.

"I do not want that to happen." His voice was firm. It was always firm, but she could sense the steel in it.

Something swirled in her gut, and she forced it away. "Your tool metaphor is getting away from you. She isn't a knife with a blade that might snap. She is a Servant, and even an incomplete Servant will always do what it is meant to do." She believed that, or she wanted to.

No. No, there could be no doubt. Saber would do the job she was here to do, and then she would die. Whether by holding the line against the enemy, or by Caster's own hand, there could only be one of them remaining when the Grail revealed itself.

"As you say."

* * *

Caster didn't walk Souichirou all the way to the school. She would have been more than willing, were it not for the boundary field that lay inert over the premises. It was weak, and it was amateurish, and she could have shattered or re-appropriated it in her sleep. It did, however, mean that there was at least one more Master within, and she did not want to be surprised by a fight. Caster was not a woman who enjoyed spontaneity.

She left him five or six blocks away, giving him a wave and a smile that she almost felt. He returned the gesture with a solemn nod. She watched him until he turned the corner, out of sight. Her face clouded over, a storm brewing. The kind of anger that could only be a cover for something else. A reaction she could comprehend to cover up the one she didn't. Almost the moment he was gone, she turned on her heel and strode away, purposeful.

She needed to check her traps.

What the amateur had tried to do to the high school, she had done to a significant chunk of the city. Where that would drain so much as to render it a one-use contingency, the drain within her circle would not take enough life force to alert any one person. Tired, at most.

There were five magic circles enclosing roughly ten square kilometers, and methodically, she checked each. The first two were working normally. As expected. The third was damaged. Nothing intentional, or it would undoubtedly have been destroyed altogether, but two of the lines that governed limits were broken. That'd be noticeable, then. Here and there, there were likely a few buildings full of people that were either dead or comatose. A waste of energy. The loss of life didn't give her pause, but the lack of subtlety did. Attention was not something she needed at this stage of the game.

She fixed the linework, muttering quietly to herself, and tracing lines on the concrete. This was what she loved. What she was good at. Logic and feeling, blended as one into something greater than the sum of its parts. Her black jacket rustled quietly. People murmured as they passed. Caster knew what she looked like, but she didn't care. Her work was vital, and when the people of this time saw someone doing something like this, the type of insult they sprung for was "crazy homeless person" over "witch." Somehow, that was better.

Pressing a hand to the ground, she infused the magical framework with mana, then spent another twenty minutes examining her handiwork for flaws. When she was satisfied, she nodd_e_d and moved on to the next.

It was past midday when she was finished. The air was almost pleasant, the sun burning cheerily overhead. Standing straight, stretching her back, she grimaced. She'd expected that to take up more of the day, and now she had some time to burn. She took a confident step forward, then ground to a halt.

She didn't know what to do.

The people were the same, but the world was unfamiliar. What did people in this time do, when they had nothing to do? There was only so much work she could do in daylight; most of her preparations would be most productive at night, when her mana siphons were operating at full capacity. The summoning process granted Heroic Spirits the knowledge they needed to function in the time period, true, but leisure did not seem to fall under its purview.

The people around her, streaming down the sidewalk, all seemed to know exactly where they were going. She didn't move. A strange woman in a black jacket, pointed ears poking through purple hair, standing alone in a crowd. Strange looks. Annoyed faces. She was downtown; anything she wanted was at her fingertips, if only she knew what she needed.

Nothing changed but everything was different.

She started walking in a daze. Souichirou had taken her places, but they'd all been strange and new and dazzling. They didn't connect into a cohesive picture of a city. Hours until Souichirou returned. She'd been alone before. She was happier alone. And yet, all she wanted was for someone to look at her, and to _see_ her.

A soft smell, pleasant and warm, pulled her out of her trance. Savory. Beckoning. She followed it, and found herself standing at a hole-in-the-wall eatery, the kind the lower classes had run since long before her time. Pizza, the sign proclaimed. She didn't know what pizza was, but the smell was enticing. She bought a slice (they came in slices and in pies), paid for with pocket money Souichirou had given her. A greasy, grouchy looking man handed her a greasy, cheesy triangle with bits of meat on it. It looked like it was pretending to be food. She took a skeptical bite.

It was delicious.

She chewed, swallowed. A voice spoke in her head, deep and level. _Take care of your tools._ Was she overcorrecting? Maybe. As much as she hated to admit fault...

She hadn't been wrong. But. A little polish on her best knife wouldn't hurt.

Caster blinked up at the man behind the counter, who had already moved on to some other menial task. She felt like a gawking tourist, a woman hopelessly out of place and out of time. "Is a pie big enough for two people to share?"

* * *

_Next Week's Chapter Title: Relentless_


	6. Relentless

_I listened to Resurrected Replayer off the Umineko OST a lot while I was writing this chapter._

_Also, I'll call Saber Altria when Nasu comes to my house in person, shoots me in the face, and rips Artoria from my cold, dead hands._

* * *

Berserker was standing statuesque, very far away from them, and then he wasn't.

Shirou had never been hit by a truck before, but if he had, he imagined that the moments before impact would have felt a lot like seeing the screaming, red-eyed giant surging down the street toward him. He didn't even have time to close his eyes and wait for death. A resounding crash echoed through the early-morning street, but not the one he was expecting.

It happened in an instant, and Shirou could only piece the rapid images into a coherent sequence of events in retrospect. Archer dropped into a defensive stance, hesitating for the barest fraction of an inch. Shirou imagined he was considering the enemy; considering his weapons. The dual swords were obviously comfortable for him, and of the finest craftsmanship, but they would be ineffective against a beast with such raw power. He judged them, and found them wanting.

Archer's fingers opened, and he let the twin swords fall. Before they'd gone more than a few inches, they started to spark, wavering in reality, shattering before they'd even touched ground. He thrust his hands out before him, muttering something Shirou couldn't make out under his breath - a curse, or an incantation - and brought them together.

Berserker was close, and closing fast.

Golden light swirled and began to coalesce. It started in his hands, shaping into a brilliant hilt and crossguard of gold and blue and solidifying. The light shot outward, leaving in its wake a blade that stirred something noble within the soul, a crystallization of power and beauty that caught Shirou's breath in his chest.

Berserker's enormous stone sword was raised, gripped tight in two straining fists, and swung down with brutal strength. Archer stood no chance.

But the golden sword did. In one fluid motion, as the light of its creation faded, Archer brought it up to meet its counterpart. The force of the blow sent a shockwave through the street, a sound like a cannon going off a dozen feet away, but the golden sword held. Archer staggered a little under the force of the blow; his defense was successful.

Rin's eyes were wide. "That sword…" Shirou couldn't look away from it either, so he understood how she felt.

A moment of deathly silence. A look of something that was almost surprise crossed Berserker's face. "Even this fake, huh…?" Came Archer's voice, a note of wonder in it. And then, like a rollercoaster cresting its first peak, the real onslaught began. None of the flurry of blows had quite the power of that first strike, carried as it was by momentum, but even Berserker's weakest attack would have been enough to shatter a human's arm if they tried to parry it. Golden sword gripped desperately in a two-handed grip, he met each better than he should have been able to. Crashes and booms and roars assaulted the senses, Shirou's whole body vibrating with the cacophony.

Archer held his ground.

Tohsaka was about as frozen by awe as he was. Her eyes were wide, and her fists clenched and unclenched at her side. "If that sword is…" She sounded like she was talking through a math problem. "Then he must be…"

Shirou didn't know what she was talking about, but her voice broke something within him. He grabbed her by the arm, and she turned that deer-in-the-headlights look on him. "We have to do something!"

She looked dazed. Shirou realized that it had been a very long night for all three of them; none of them were moving or thinking like they should have been. "You're right," she said, shaking her head intensely. "We need Assassin."

"We need-" Shirou went cold. "No, we can't. _I _can't." The pain, like plunging into an ocean of icy fire. He couldn't do that again. Not unless he had no other choice.

"**Rin Tohsaka is correct. My blade is needed, Contractor. This man was a monster even before his mind was taken from him."**

Archer called out, strained. "Rin! Our plan from earlier! I'll cover your escape!" He grunted, a parry sending him skidding back into a brick wall hard enough to crack it. _He's tired,_ Shirou thought, horrified. _He's tired and he can't go all out, because he's protecting us._

His fingers on her arm tightened, and she pulled out of his grip, her face white. "Tohsaka, he's right. We have to get out of here."

That broke through the daze, and her expression morphed to outrage. "No! I will not run from this like a coward!" She raised a hand, and Shirou saw something glittering in her fingers.

"He can't fight if he's protecting us!" Shirou hadn't meant to yell, but he had, and she froze again. "Look at him." He pointed. "He keeps putting himself in front of Berserker's swings, even when he could just get out of the way and save some energy." His own technique sucked, but his understanding of the theory was decent. Fuji-nee had done her best. "He's stopping Berserker from coming after us instead of looking for ways to fight back."

Another crash. Rin's jaw tightened, a tendon straining in her neck. "Fine. You're right. We… we have to move." She glared at him with enough fire to melt a boulder. "Damn you."

* * *

Archer's body burned with fatigue. Not in the way he'd burned when he was mortal; this was more of a spreading weakness than the pain of overexertion. The repeated impacts had left his fingers numb, and he half expected his projected weapon to go skidding out of his hands with every block. He was surprised it hadn't shattered. He could not match the strength of the original, but even this shadow of a copy was _powerful._

Using it felt like a betrayal.

She should have _been_ here to wield it herself.

His true Heroic Spirit dwelled eternal within the Throne of Heroes, ready to be summoned as an agent of the Counter Force. It, essentially, received reports of the experiences of every single one of its incarnations throughout time and space, but he, this instance of him, did not. He was a projection, created by the Holy Grail to fill the role of "Archer" using the true Heroic Spirit as a template, not unlike the way the sword he held in his hand was a facsimile he had created to fill the role of "a sword that cannot be beaten." (A contradiction in terms, yes, but he had unshakable faith in the Sword of Promised Victory, and faith meant more than all the supposedly unbreakable rules in the universe. It was why he'd fallen so far.) Only bits and pieces of his myriad existences filtered down into any given summoning. Half remembered images and memories like the name of a once-beloved song that danced on the tip of the tongue. Every scrap of possibility his grasping, clawing fingers could reach told him that her presence was a constant. If Shirou Emiya entered the Fifth Holy Grail War, no matter what else changed, Artoria Pendragon fought at his side.

This was wrong.

It was like a persistent itch at the back of his mind. An insect bite that he couldn't reach. Was Assassin a symptom, or was he the cause? Was there a meaning at all, or was this just an especially rare turn of fate in the grand scheme of the multiverse? Did it matter?

Even now, fighting desperately for his life and his Master's life, the itch was everpresent. But was it only that? An oily sheen on reality; a sense that the world was offset just enough to drive him mad. He was intimately familiar with the pain of a phantom limb — this was a phantom _world_.

Duck. Redirect. Close the gap. Parry. His bones hurt. His hands would break before the sword did. He would break upon the self-loathing before the sword did. This was a mistake. He risked a glance behind him; the two Masters were still standing there. _Idiots._ "Go!" He barely had time to react to the next attack. They'd get him killed like this.

"Fine! I'm leaving this to you, Archer!" Rin projected absolute, casual confidence, but he knew her well enough to know that she was boiling over with rage and fear and indignation. "A little while is enough. Keep him busy by yourself." Something quieter.

"**Archer is no match for Berserker," **Assassin's booming voice intoned. "**Allow me to support him."**

Deflect. Parry. Recover.

He could hear the struggle in Shirou's silence, without even needed to see the boy. A war between his foolish heroic instincts and fear of the pain.

Archer barked out a laugh he didn't feel. "I'll be able to escape once you guys are gone." Parry. Smash. Dodge. "Independent Action is a specialty of Archers, after all!"

Behind Berserker, in the moment between strikes, he caught a glimpse of the giant's master. Illya. His gut clenched, and he grit his teeth against the flood of melancholy and guilt. She looked bored, nothing approaching recognition on her face. "Such a pathetic, nameless Servant, stop my Berserker? That's almost kind of cute."

They were really drawing this retreat out, weren't they? Did they want him to die?

"Archer, I-"

He cut Rin off before she could say anything. "Buying time is fine, but you won't mind if I beat that thing, right?"

Parry. Parry. Parry. The numbness had been replaced by pain, but pain was easier. Pain had always been easier.

Rin was silent for a moment, and he imagined her look of shock melting into one of determination. "Yeah, you don't need to hold back. Kick his ass, Archer!" With that, two pairs of running footsteps faded into the grey morning.

A fog was gathering around them. That was fine.

"Don't let them get away, Berserker!" Illya screamed, her boredom quickly being replaced by petulant anger. "Kill Archer and tear them apart!"

Holding ground was not Archer's strong suit. He could keep himself alive through battle as well as anyone he'd ever known, but it was a fast and mobile and evasive defense. If he'd used his usual tactics, Rin and Shirou (but mostly Rin) would have been wide open. He had been fighting with his hands tied behind his back, and Rin had just cut the rope.

Berserker roared again, and he answered with a feral grin. The shackles were off. Archer was tired, but he had more than enough fight left for this. He leapt backward, buying himself a moment to prepare. Berserker didn't follow immediately. So the great beast was capable of caution. Archer shifted his grip on Excalibur to a single hand, and opened his other wide. Magic circuits sparked to life, power flowed through him like an electric current, and a great black and red inversion of the blessed blade formed in the other. Darkness radiated from it the way light poured off its twin. Guilt would come later. This was combat, pure and uninhibited. Desperate and terrifying and uncertain.

Archer had never felt more alive.

"_I am the bone of my sword."_

* * *

Shirou ran until his lungs burned, and the guilt ran with him.

They'd left Archer to die. The unspoken goodbye in Rin's voice had driven it home to him, but it was too late to regret.

He stopped running, who knew how many minutes later, and Rin immediately collided with his back with a squawk, knocking the both of them to the ground. Shirou sat up first, and she followed suit a moment later, rubbing at an elbow that had been scraped raw by asphalt. "What the hell, Emiya? Do you remember what we're running from?"

He shook his head. "I mean, yeah, I do, but… We just left him, Rin. We should go back."

She slapped him across the face, hard. "Don't do that. _You_ just told _me _we had to run. We made a choice, and we have to live with the consequences." She pushed herself to her feet, then grabbed him roughly under the arms and hauled him up as well.

His cheek stung, but he said nothing. He looked back the way they had come. They were far enough away that the sounds of battle were no longer audible, or Archer was already dead. A feeling like powerful magnetism was pulling him back that way.

She bulled her way in front of him, blocking his gaze. She looked terrified, and she looked angry, and he couldn't tell which was stronger. "What's wrong with you, Emiya? Come on, we have to _go_." More than either of those things, though, what he heard in her voice was confusion. "He'll make it. He's an ass, but he's strong and smart." He thought she was trying to convince herself as much as him. "He'll meet up with us later." She held up the back of her hand, showing him the Command Seal. She'd used one at some point, he noted. "Look, if he was dead, this would be gone. He's still fighting."

From somewhere behind the oppressive mist, a distant roar. So, maybe not as far as he'd thought. But then there was another roar, and this one was closer.

Shirou's heart lodged in his throat.

Rin grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him, then shoved him forward. "_We have to go!"_

* * *

Illya von Einzbern didn't understand what she was seeing.

It had all been so simple, at first. One Servant, two Masters. Wherever Assassin was, it wasn't here. Berserker would make short work of Archer, then dismember the girl, then break Shirou's legs and return him to her. Easy-peasy.

But it hadn't gone that way. Archer had summoned a sword that almost hurt to look at. He'd held Berserker - _Berserker! -_ at bay. He hadn't given up an inch. Just when it had seemed like Berserker was going to win, the Masters had run, and everything had changed.

Twin trails of black and gold followed the two swords in Archer's hands, and he wielded them like buzzsaws, carving furrows in her Servant's ironhide flesh. He flowed like water, and Berserker's attacks were like trying to catch dust in the wind. Where Archer had parried more attacks than he'd dodged, at cost to himself, now he was slippery, never giving Berserker the opportunity to land a solid hit.

Berserker thrust, and he ducked under the blow.

Berserker swung, and his crossed swords _caught_ the enormous weapon.

Berserker threw out a massive fist, and the black sword cut deep into his forearm.

An overhead swing crashed into the ground, cratering the pavement and sending shrapnel spinning in every direction. Archer was already moving, sliding between the great tree-trunk legs, swinging _behind _him as he passed. Berserker roared and dropped to his knees, and Illya couldn't help a scream as she realized what had happened. Those two swords had cut his hamstrings. "Kill him, Berserker!" she wailed, and he tried to obey, swiping behind him with one enormous hand. Archer danced backward, then _lunged_, burying the golden sword into Berserker's heart so deeply that the tip sprouted from her Servant's chest like an ugly flower.

Berserker struggled for a moment, then went still. Archer tugged on the sword, but found it trapped in poor Berserker's rocklike flesh. He considered this for a moment, then shrugged and turned to her. "Easier than I thought it'd be," he said casually, switching the black sword to his dominant hand.

She looked up at him, eyes wide, and took an unconscious step back. "Berserker! Berserker, get up!"

He approached her, raising the sword.

"Berserker!" she screamed, stumbling backward and landing on her butt hard enough to knock the breath from her. She fought the urge to burst into tears. She would _not_ cry.

Sword held over his head, ready to kill, Archer hesitated.

Behind him, Berserker sprang to life with a roar as his eyes flashed blinding red, swinging his fist in a wide arc. It took Archer in the side hard enough to snap ribs and sent him slamming back into a wall hard enough to crash through it.

"Berserker!" She cried, smiling, and ran to the giant with tears in her eyes. Berserker stood slowly, as if testing his own regenerative capabilities, and she wrapped her arms around his leg in the biggest hug she could give. She'd known he was okay. She'd _known_ how his Noble Phantasm worked. But knowing was different than believing, and in that moment she'd been so sure-

A flurry of arrows poured from the hole in the wall, and Berserker turned to shield her with his back. They pounded repeatedly into him as she screamed, unable to see what was happening, and she felt him go lifelessly still once again.

A few seconds later, the rain of steel stopped, and Berserker turned, alive once more. She saw that the dozen weapons lodged in his back were not arrows at all, but _swords_, each one a different size and shape. Archer emerged from the hole in the wall, a great bow in one hand, the black sword in the other. "How many times do I have to kill you, big guy?" He asked casually.

"Twelve," she boasted.

Archer tilted his head, then nodded. "I can do that."

The battle rejoined, and it dragged on. Archer cut Berserker's throat with the black sword, then found that it could no longer penetrate her Servant's skin. Berserker took advantage of his confusion and broke Archer's arm. The sword clattered uselessly to the ground.

The fight was confusing and hard for her to follow, and she found herself backing up into the alley, telling herself that she was _not_ cowering.

Archer had more weapons than she could count. None of them were as powerful as the first two, usually shattering after just a couple blows. Berserker was like the world's most dangerous pincushion, swinging and roaring and punching with reckless abandon. Archer killed him again, driving a narrow sword deep into Berserker's gut and twisting, but he was breathing hard, his movements slowing. He still kept one step ahead, but that wouldn't last forever.

What ended the fight was bad luck, more than anything. A piece of rubble torn from the ruined street gave under Archer's foot, and he stumbled. That was all Berserker needed, and he capitalized on the opportunity. With a scream of rage and pain, he swung, and Archer tried desperately to parry, but with one arm hanging limply at his side and such a weak sword in his other hand, all he could do was dampen the blow. The nameless sword shattered in his grasp, and Berserker's sword took him in the gut.

It should have cut Archer in two, but all it managed to do was carve deep enough to glance off of Archer's spine with a hollow _chunk_. Archer gasped and coughed, spraying blood onto Berserker's indifferent chest. The sword was pulled free, and Archer staggered backward, face pale as a ghost, his good hand holding his guts inside him. That was annoying.

After all that he'd done, she wanted to see his guts. Illya balled her hands into fists and threw them over her head with a whooping cheer.

He mumbled something she couldn't quite hear. It sounded like a prayer. That seemed fair. Berserker raised his sword to finish him, but as she cheered him on, something strange happened. Archer glared defiantly up at his approaching death, no fear in his eyes, and growled words that made no sense.

"_Unlimited Blade Works."_

The world rippled, a wave of power spreading away from Archer like a stone tossed into a pond. A ring of fire burned around them, and even Berserker seemed taken aback. Then…

The world _shifted_.

Where they'd stood in the ruin of a shattered street, surrounded by carved ground and blasted craters, the three of them now stood in a wide, flat expanse of hardpan desert. The air was hot and dry, and though there was no sun that she could see, heat burned Illya's sensitive white skin. Instead, great gears hung in the sky like unfathomable clockwork, a deafening _tick tick tick _filling the air. As far as the eye could see, swords were stuck in the ground, point down. No two swords looked the same.

_A Reality Marble?_ But that was impossible! A mere _Archer _couldn't have such a thing.

Berserker took an unconscious step back, red eyes darting from side to side in confusion. He made a sound more like an uncertain growl than his usual roar.

A sound of static, and the world wavered. Flickered back and forth between the street and the impossible desert. One second, tightly packed sand and stone; the next, broken asphalt. Two competing signals, like a broken television. Illya felt sick, and her thoughts had simply stopped; she was trying too hard to understand what was _happening_.

When Archer moved, he moved impossibly fast. His good hand closed on one of the hilts nearest him, and he yanked from the ground an odd spiraled sword, like an oversized unicorn's horn. With a roar of effort and pain, he threw himself forward, driving the horn-sword through Berserker's belly. Again, a sword erupted from Berserker's lower back, and the giant roared in pain.

Time stopped. The world flickered again, wavering and jumping. They were a tableau of violence and pain, silhouetted against the dead orange sky and made vague by distortion.

Archer screamed, throwing his body upon the hilt of the sword jutting from her Servant. She had just enough time to wonder what he was doing before the blade _snapped_, and with the most earshattering, painful sound Illya had ever heard-

the world

_dissolved_

into white.

She came to seconds or minutes later, back in the real world. It didn't look any different than it had before it had disappeared, not at all like a bomb had just gone off, but her whole body ached and burned in a way totally distinct from the usual, everpresent agony of the Command Seals etched across her entire self. Berserker seemed to be returning to life, as well. Whatever Archer had done, it had taken another of his precious regenerations.

She coughed, doubling over in pain on her side. Stars swirled before her, and she wanted to cry. Her throat was tight, and her vision wavered. Archer was gone. Escaped and crippled, or vaporized by his own suicide attack. She hadn't seen the telltale golden sparkles, so she couldn't be sure. Either way, one thing was clear.

"Berserker," she coughed. He turned to look at her, his body still riddled with weapons. She was so thirsty. "Archer is gone. Go kill them." Her voice was a rasp.

Berserker roared in assent, and disappeared in a rumble of groundbreaking footfalls.

Illya rolled onto her back, staring up into the early-dawn fog, and let her tears fall.

* * *

Two blood-caked masters fled across the suffocating city, and the mad warrior followed.

Rin was not out of shape. Not in the slightest. Powerful mages often neglected their physical bodies, bothering only to train their magical abilities. Idiots. If you could throw a punch, if you could move quickly, whole new avenues of strategy were opened up to you that most mages would never stoop to consider.

If she hadn't trained her body as intently as she had, she would be dead, her remains splattered across the street several miles back. Her lungs burned. Her legs felt like rubber. Her neck was stiff from all the glances she was throwing behind her. Even her _arms_ hurt. How could she have known to prepare for _this_?

She didn't know where they were going, and she didn't think Shirou did either. His breath was as ragged as hers, and he was clutching his side with gritted teeth. His strides were looking more and more like limps. There was no way to run and to speak at the same time, and there was nothing to say. Archer had bought time, but not enough, and their death was drawing close.

Fog churned oppressively around them, reducing visibility to a matter of meters. If they'd been able to pull farther away, that might have made a difference in their favor, but as they were, it was no help. She chanced another look over her shoulder, and she would have screamed if she'd had the breath. A great hulking shadow moved at the edges of visibility, without even definition enough to mark it as humanoid. It was a malevolent mass of darkness. It was oddly muffled, but each of its footsteps was a crash, shattering the pavement as it passed. The sound of its sword dragging on the ground behind it was an earsplitting high squeal, and its roars invoked the inevitability of an oncoming train.

"Getting closer," she gasped, and she had no idea if Shirou would be able to hear her. It was a useless thing to say. He could hear the thundering giant just as well as she could.

"**Thine options are but one," **Assassin's voice boomed. "**The price for stubbornness has been paid in blood."**

Shirou's eyes were bloodshot. He didn't react to the words.

There was a crash behind them, a different crash, and she looked behind her just in time to see the shadow - now possessing limbs - swipe a parked car out of its way, sending it tumbling side over side into the sidewalk. The sounds of twisting metal and shattering glass, muffled by the blanketing fog. Its alarm went off, the blaring siren adding to the auditory assault, rhythmic. Berserker roared again, and the city shook with the sound.

"**Berserker draws near. It will take thine lives as easily as it draws breath." **There was an edge to the words. A frustration dancing in the consonants. "**Allow me to fight. Allow me to fulfil the duty I was summoned to perform."**

Shirou's breath had a rough edge to it, like something was catching inside of him with every exhalation. All Rin could do was hope that his lungs weren't filling up with fluid, or something. The kind of drain he'd suffered earlier could do terrible things to a body; for all she knew, something had ruptured he was bleeding internally.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry, and she wanted to deny that the tears were in her eyes. She wanted to curl up in a ball and wake from the nightmare.

That kind of thinking got you killed, and Rin Tohsaka was not the kind of person to lay down and die. If she gave up, she wouldn't be worthy of the name.

No time to aim, but she needed to buy a few more seconds. One of her precious gems flew up into the air and exploded in a dazzling white and an ear-splitting screech. Berserker's footsteps faltered, and the next roar was one of pain. She didn't know if she could pierce that monster's thick hide, but eyes and ears were always vulnerable. It was a massive expenditure of resources for minimal gain, but it meant they could run a few seconds longer.

The distance between them lengthened, but not by much. Everything was on fire, and nausea wracked her, but she had to keep it controlled. If she stopped to puke, she'd die.

_Boom boom boom boomboomboom, _the slowed footsteps regained speed, clashing with the nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of the sword on the ground.

She chanced a glance to the side. Shirou was wavering from side to side as he ran, and had dipped several feet behind her. There was a trickle of blood under the corner of his lips, and another streak of blood like a teardrop down one cheek. A vessel had burst in that eye. He wouldn't be able to go much further; Assassin's drain had been too much.

"Dammit," she gasped, without much fire, and dug a second gem out of her pocket. This one she let fall, then roared a word and snapped her fingers the instant she was sure Shirou had passed it. She couldn't look, but there was a grinding sound as a column of stone shot up from the ground, creating a barrier that might slow Berserker down. The crash that followed almost instantly suggested that it didn't. Two of her gems, and what had she accomplished? She wanted to laugh.

She could leave him. She could let him fall behind, and Berserker would stop to deal with him. That Einzbern kid had been interested in Shirou; maybe she'd have her Servant carry him back, and she'd be able to save him later.

Or let him die.

The thought was tempting.

The crashing and screeching and roaring were deafening. Another sound. Squealing metal, and then something passed by them fast enough for the wind of its passing to ruffle Rin's hair. She had just enough time to recognize a stop sign, ripped from the ground, before it disappeared into the white. If that had hit….

"**Your foolishness dishonors us both."**

The breath caught in Rin's chest as Shirou stumbled. Whether from exhaustion or a dip in the terrain or his ankle simply twisting out from under him, he lost his balance. She reached out a hand to try to grab him, to steady him, but there was nothing she could do in time. He dipped one way, overcorrected, and hit the ground, momentum sending him tumbling and skidding with a yell. She skidded to a stop as well, out of nothing more than sheer instinct and a desire to protect, and in an instant, Berserker was on them.

In the brief moments she had, she saw that the giant was covered in viscous blood, blades driven deep into his flesh all across his body. His eyes burned with rage, and a trickle of blackish fluid had run down his chin. Without breaking stride, he raised his cruel, bloodstained sword, chipped and bloody and cracked.

Shirou barely had time to look up and start screaming, his face a mask of blood.

"**I will show you the meaning of duty, Contractor."**

A scream of terror turned into a scream of absolute agony as the great black-armored man, nearly Berserker's own height, appeared to block the monster's way, standing over his suffering Master. Blue sparks showered down over Shirou's writhing body, illuminating him, as monstrous sword met black-iron shield. The sword was stopped, but Berserker's body carried the same momentum, and he barreled full-speed into Assassin. He took it in stride as best he could, using his own, significant mass to redirect the energy. The two of them spun off into the fog, harmlessly passing over Shirou's prone form. A solid brick wall collapsed like a child's sandcastle as they smashed through it.

She ran to his side, kneeling down beside him. He twisted and bucked and yelled, and his bloody eyes were wide and unseeing. This would kill him. Everything she'd done would be for nothing, and he would _die_, and if he died, then-

"Assassin!" She screamed, wrapping Shirou's limp, shuddering arm around her shoulders. "A few seconds at a time!" She screamed with effort and pulled him to his feet. "Dematerialize every second you can spare!"

She wasn't his Master, and she didn't have the authority to order him around, but the moment the words were out of her mouth, Shirou gasped, his whole body trembling, and started supporting some of his own weight. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. She shook her head violently, and started limping them forward as quickly as she could. "We need to get out of here while we can," she panted. "The pain will be-"

They'd barely made it ten steps before Shirou wailed again, his whole body locking up and nearly dragging them both to the ground. The sound of sword on sword echoed, and she caught a glimpse of a pair of shadows clashing just at the edge of sight. One of the shadows swung its hazy sword, and the other disappeared in the blink of an eye, fog swirling to fill the empty space. Berserker bellowed with rage and frustration.

Shirou was drenched in sweat and blood, and she felt so many things so intensely that it all became a kind of numbness. His breath was heavy, his movements slow, his face grey as slate, but he caught himself, and they started again to limp away.

Focus on their steps. On keeping Shirou standing. There was no room for anything else. Her mind was numb. Her body was numb. It would be so easy to just let herself fall.

The crashing footfalls grew closer. She didn't look. Louder. She didn't look. Shirou wailed again, pitifully, and buckled. It took everything she had to keep him from hitting the ground again.

She looked.

Assassin stood tall, swinging his shield in an arc to deflect Berserker's sword, then used the momentum to slash at the giant's arm. The cold steel bit deep into the flesh of Berserker's forearm, but when Berserker swiped again where Assassin had stood, he met only empty air.

Another roar of frustration, and another paroxysm of abject suffering from the boy at her side, as Assassin reappeared at Berserker's back, drawing a line of blinding blue fire across the beast. Shirou's scream was more like a whistle than anything, his voice destroyed.

Swing into empty air. Reappear. Seize. Strike. Disappear. Take a few steps. Claw for every millimeter of distance as if it were a mile.

Somehow, the intermittent, unpredictable nature of the pain made it seem even more cruel than an unbroken torrent of it would have been.

Assassin, for all his raw power, was managing little more than to distract. The constant materialization and dematerialization wasn't giving enough time for his mana to gather, to coalesce into something stable. The worst he could be was a buzzing wasp, there one minute, gone the next, repeated stings enraging the monster, but not truly hurting him. His sword drew blood, but didn't cleave; that blue fire burned, but didn't blacken.

The battle receded and drew nearer. Shirou stumbled forward and nearly dragged her down. Assassin was there, and then he wasn't. _What am I doing?_ She thought. _If I let him fall and ran, I'd be free. _

But the truth was… she knew he wouldn't do that to her, were their positions reversed. She couldn't wrap her mind around why. It made no sense. It went against everything she knew about the world.

It made her want to be better.

Time was unreal. Nonexistent. Every moment was an eternity and every eon was an instant. The chase continued. The chase had no end. The chase would never end.

Until, of course, it did.

The first thing Rin noticed was something that looked like a bird but wasn't. Even in this state, she recognized a construct instantly. It flitted around Berserker and Assassin, curious, darting this way and that. A familiar, childish voice emerged from the construct, tinny and faint and afraid. "Berserker?"

Berserker ground to a halt, looking at the blue bird-thing. Assassin vanished, and Shirou went limp in her arms. She struggled to hold him up, and his eyes fluttered. "Stay with me, Shirou. Please…"

"You've been gone a really long time," Illya's voice said, and it was on the edge of cracking. "I'm… I'm alone and I don't know this place and it hurts and… and I don't like it. We'll kill them later. Please come back." Her voice broke on the last word. "Please…"

And as quickly and intently as he'd chased after them, Berserker disappeared into the fog, back the way they'd come. Silence descended upon them. After all that… All of that, and they only survived because a little girl had gotten scared and lonely.

Great fight, team. Good hustle.

"Shirou?" She did the only thing she could think of to rouse him, and slapped him across the face. His eyes shot wide with a grunt, and he found his feet. His breath came rough, his eyes darting this way and that, and she loosened her grip. He was heavy, and she was so weary down to her bones.

Assassin did not rematerialize, but Shirou mumbled something incoherent, then pitched forward. She couldn't stop him from hitting the ground; all she really managed was to slow his fall a little.

She looked down at the boy for a long, long moment. All was still and silent. She didn't know where they'd ended up. How to get home from here. Assassin couldn't come back out without maybe killing his Master. Her own Servant was missing in action. Emiya would not be able to move under his own power, even if he woke up. And she was more tired than she could ever remember being in her whole life, but there was no time to rest.

She started laughing as she bent down to try to pull Emiya off the ground, and she didn't stop until her own throat was raw and painful and she tasted blood.

* * *

_Next chapter: A Moment To Breathe_


	7. A Moment to Breathe

_Note:_The world being wrong isn't just a cheeky reference to this being a different timeline than canon or a flippant justification for getting rules wrong. I'm no Nasuverse expert, so I'm gonna also just get things wrong sometimes, but that feeling Archer has is very relevant to the plot of this fic and why certain things happen the way they do.

Anyway! Enjoy!

* * *

_Everything was heat and blinding light and thirst. I couldn't see anything else, but the swordsman saw none of it. His dreams were like walking through a haunted house without power or light. Shades of things that held significance once, but were now mere shapes casting shadows in the dark._

_The swirling sand covered everything but the man's ideals._

_What he saw was the promise of what could be, of the gifts God himself had bestowed upon his people. He was thankful for the sun, though it burned, for all it did to nurture life and growth. He was thankful for the thirst, because it reminded him to savor every drop of water. He wanted for many things, and he was thankful, because life was not about what you had, it was about how you lived. _

_The swirling sand covered everything but the man's ideals and his darkness._

_He raged and screamed and clawed like a wild animal, but it was only himself he truly hated, and only in his most solitary moments. A seed crystal of… something. Something he didn't let himself think about unless he was truly alone. The valor and hypocrisy of his existence._

_No matter what else changed, I couldn't see his face. Gusting sand and sweltering darkness veiled it from sight, but I don't think this was deliberate obfuscation. I don't think he remembered his own face. He felt nothing at this lack, but I felt regret. It didn't seem right, but I didn't know why I felt that way. He was an assassin, right? He killed people for a living. He killed so many people so well that he was remembered to this day as a Heroic Spirit. He deserved to forget. He deserved to lose himself._

_I wanted to believe that._

_But I didn't._

_The man knelt upon a simple, clean rug, and the memory of this rug was as sharp and clear as the rest of it was obscured. His arms were folded under him, his face against the floor. He was muttering to himself, I thought at first, but I realized soon that it was more than that. Something heard him._

_There were rich men, and there were poor men, and there was the man. He had a name, once, but not even he can recall it. Names were not what made things powerful. He knew this. _

_To know yourself so well and to have forgotten such important things… _

_The desert could be cruel, but it could be beautiful, too._

_The dunes were great works of art, sculpted by a loving, forgiving God. How could he not see the beauty?_

_A flash in the storm. A blade in the dark. Blood soaked quickly into the sand. Hidden. No joy, but contentment. The relief of a job, finished. I felt the same way when I fixed a piece of machinery that everyone else had given up for dead. I couldn't see my body, but I could feel the chill that ran through it._

_We __**weren't**_ _the same._

_A hope for… something. I couldn't see what. _

_Many men died. Many men lived. He did not choose their fate. He was a tool of something greater. He never killed an innocent, but the blood on his hands should have been enough to drown him. This was the larval stage of the Heroic Spirit known as Assassin: the elements of the force of nature he would become were there, but they were unformed, incomplete. The metamorphosis had not begun._

_The shadows cloaked him, and the shadows blanketed him, and the shadows protected him. He became one with the shadows, and the shadows welcomed him as an old friend._

_Until the darkness betrayed him._

* * *

By the time Rin had made it back to her own home, she was so delirious with exhaustion that she had half convinced herself that if she stopped moving, she'd probably die. The front door was a problem, and she had to set the idiot sack of bricks down on the ground to fumble it open. A vindictive urge to just leave him on the doorstep washed over her, and it was all she could do to keep herself from following through.

But no, she couldn't do that. Not now. Not after the night they'd had. Later, well…

Later was later.

The door squeaked open, and she got her arms under his to drag him inside. She thought he'd stopped bleeding at some point, so she let herself hope that maybe he wouldn't bleed all over her expensive shit after all. Moments later, the tacky trail of half-dried blood that he left behind like a slug dashed that particular hope.

"Archer?" She called weakly. "Archer, are you here?" There was no response, so she checked her Command Seal. It was still there, so the dickhead hadn't kicked the bucket just yet. "Assholes," she grumbled, yanking Shirou up a set of stairs, too tired and grumpy to bother being gentle. "I'm surrounded by useless assholes." Her burning arms gave out, and she made an undignified sound as his head _thunk_ed into one of the steps.

"**My Contractor is human,"** Assassin's unearthly voice chided her. "**Please do not concuss him."**

"If whatever you're doing to him hasn't ruined his brain, a little head injury won't make much difference one way or the other," she growled, hoisting him up over the last step. She lowered him to the ground more deliberately, and doubled over panting.

"**He does seem to possess a remarkably thick skull, for a mortal,"** he mused helpfully.

Despite herself, Rin coughed out a laugh. "I'll say." Was he actually making a joke? It was possible. She might have imagined that pleased quality in the energy of the room. Laughing with an enemy was a strange feeling.

The moment passed, through, and she continued the agonizing journey, not realizing she was going to her bedroom until she was already there. "You'll pay for those sheets," she muttered.

"**Why art thou doing this?"** The humor was gone from his voice, but it wasn't quite an accusation. Just a switch to a more serious topic.

"Putting this dumbass in my bed? If you figure it out, let me know." She paused at the bedside, weighing her options. She genuinely wasn't sure if she could lift him, as tired as she was.

"**Where his head lies matters little. Why art thou putting my Contractor under thine protection? I have taken stock of thee, and thou art a mage of no small skill. Dost thou owe him a debt?"**

She looked down at his unconscious body, bruised and battered and so covered in dried blood that she almost couldn't see the grey pall on his skin. His right eye was swollen shut, and his slow breath had a ragged edge to it. He looked worse than he had when he'd been bleeding out in the school, she thought with an odd pang. At least that would have been a quick death. Other responses assailed her, memories and feelings and intuitions, but mostly, she saw the distant smile of a sad, empty girl. "Not to him."

She had the sense of being regarded. Studied. He didn't respond.

She halfway considered asking him to manifest for a few seconds, just to hoist Shirou up onto the bed. Would he even feel it if he was already unconscious? "It's none of your business, anyway." She pushed the thought away, then grabbed him and lifted with her knees. After a bit of a struggle, she managed to get his upper body up on top of the mattress. She… needed another second to breathe.

"**Once my Contractor hath awakened, wilt thou propose an alliance?"**

She grimaced as she flopped his limp legs up onto the bed and tucked a pillow under his head. "I haven't thought that far ahead. You guys are still my enemy."

"**Thou hast been presented with many an opportunity to end his life, and yet still he draws breath. How far will thy debt take thee?"**

She pried his shoes off of his feet and tossed them off into a corner. It was an absolutely meaningless gesture, considering how nasty the guy was at the moment, but something about leaving his shoes on while he was in bed felt wrong. "I don't know. Maybe. I don't know where Archer is, and you can't manifest without hurting him. Neither of us have great odds."

"**It would, perhaps, be beneficial, then. Thou art a being of honor, and I will never be the first to break a bond. If an alliance were proposed, it would be honored."**

Rin squinted suspiciously at the patch of empty air that the voice seemed to originate from. "You seem awfully keen on cooperation for an Assassin."

"**I do not hide my intentions. No one tastes death from my blade that has not gazed upon my face and known their time. Other assassins skulk in the shadows, figurative and literal. I do no such thing."**

"You're a weird one, you know that? I didn't prepare for this possibility." Should she put him under the blankets? She went back and forth a few times on that, before begrudgingly wedging him under her top sheet. She'd make him replace them all anyway.

"**Preparation can only take one so far. The realities of any situation must dictate the action taken. I must remind thee: my intentions are not altruistic. The rules of my summoning dictate that I must do everything in my power to make my Contractor victorious. An alliance with thee is the best path to that end I can see."**

She wasn't used to that kind of honesty. Her first instinct was to recoil, to look for the angle, but she had to remind herself that he'd just _told_ her his angle. That wasn't how most magi did things. "You… make a good point." She stood up straight, held her head up high. "And the same goes for you, Assassin. We aren't friends. We'll probably end up killing each other in the end. But for now…" She held out a hand to shake, ready to seal the deal, before remembering that Assassin wouldn't be able to reciprocate. She lowered it sheepishly. "For now, we're allies."

"**Allies."** There was a strange sense of finality to the word.

"As long as Emiya agrees, anyway." She glanced over at the unconscious lump. Even all beat to shit like he was, he had started to look a little less like he'd been pounded unconscious and a little more like he was asleep.

"**My Contractor has a good heart. He will not object to cooperation."**

"It's more the part after that I'm worried about."

"**A good heart must sometimes be hardened. Bitter experience will be an excellent teacher."**

"Uh… huh." Cryptic goddamn weirdo. A yawn cracked her jaw, and that terrible exhaustion filled her again. "Anyway, I'm gonna go pass the fuck out. Make sure stupid doesn't choke on his own tongue while he's asleep, or something."

Assassin didn't seem to consider this to be worthy of a response, so she shuffled stiffly out of the silent bedroom. At the door, she hesitated.

_Wait, where am __**I**_ _going to sleep?_

She threw open the door with a groan, took one look around, and thought _Can't the universe give me ONE SECOND to rest?_

The room outside her bedroom was a mess. A trail of half-dried blood and dirt ran along the path she'd dragged Emiya through, and some of the furniture had gotten knocked around a little in the process. She expected that. What she _didn't_ expect was the _mangled corpse_ that was _draped over her __**goddamn sofa**_**.** Her first reaction was dull rage more than it was fear.

When the red haze of anger had lifted a little, the image resolved into something a little more sensible. The corpse was Archer, and though he was mangled and bleeding, he wasn't _actually _a corpse. Not yet, anyway. She could see more blood and burns than unmarred skin, and his left arm, hanging off to one side, was twisted in a fashion that suggested the bone had been shattered. The smell of violence in the air. His left eye swollen shut in almost an exact mirror of Shirou's bruise. What was worst was the enormous gash straight across his belly, what she took to be his good hand actually holding it closed so as to keep his insides… well, _inside_. Her servant was slumped back in what might have looked like a lounge if it weren't for the evisceration, head lolling back, a trickle of drool running out of the corner of his mouth.

Something burbled and twisted under her ribs. Sheer relief that he was alive. Warm gratitude for his noble sacrifice. Cold fear that his flow of magical energy might be so disrupted that he might disappear at any moment. Sorrow at the agony he must have endured. She felt all these things, swirling together in a confusing, gnarled churn of emotion. A million ways to express it all ran through her mind at once.

What she actually _said_ was: "_What the hell happened to kicking Berserker's ass?"_

* * *

Consciousness came slowly.

At first, all he was aware of was a dull pain that seemed to encompass everything. Blanketing. Formless. After all that had happened last night, this level of ache was almost comforting. But he was a person, he remembered, and a person had a shape. Over minutes or days, the undefined haze began to resolve into something that resembled his body; this pain was in his head, those his arms, these his legs. In that half-sleep, he could almost convinced himself that his muscles burned after a hard workout the day before, and nothing more. Dehydration and exertion. It could also explain the weariness that had settled deep into his bones, but no exercise had ever made him feel this drained.

Seconds or hours later, he noticed the silence. The steady, calming ticking of the clock in his bedroom was missing. From there he realized that he wasn't home, which made him note that the blankets wrapped around him were unfamiliar. They were _soft_, and they were smooth, and they smelled nice. An oddly familiar perfumed scent that tickled his nose, but not unpleasantly. His own sheets were scratchy and rough, and they didn't smell like anything. He missed them terribly.

Shirou let himself drift.

When finally he opened his eyes, it felt as though he'd been deposited in some other reality while he'd been asleep. He recognized that he was in _a_ bedroom, but not much else. The floor was luxurious red carpeting, streaked with a strange, rusty brown; the walls paneled in dark wood. Golden, embroidered curtains hung over windows that streamed sunlight, matching the opulent ceiling. A canopy that was also the bed spread high above him, the sheets wrapped around him white and gold and red and soaked in sweat. His sneakers lay forlornly in a far corner, and he found himself staring at them, trying to wrap his mind around his surroundings. The splash of familiarity was enough to make the rest seem all the more unreal. More money had been spent on this room than he or Kiritsugu had probably ever seen in their whole lives combined. The air was strangely still.

"**The other Master's bedroom,"** rumbled Assassin's voice from nowhere, and Shirou felt a strange pride that it didn't startle him this time. "**Rin Tohsaka. She carried you several miles back to her home after the battle."**

Shirou blinked. "Miles…?" He hadn't known where they'd been running. They'd just run. He had a vague idea of where Tohsaka lived, though, and it couldn't have been close. "I'll have to thank her, then." He was trying to talk at a normal volume, but all that was actually coming out was a hoarse whisper. A dull ache throbbed behind one eye, and he closed them again. It helped a little.

"**Whilst thou slept, a pact was made. We shall ally with her and her Servant until such time as cooperation will no longer be beneficial." **A pause. "**If I have overstepped my bounds, know that I did so only in order to better fulfill the duty for which I was summoned."**

Warmth settled into his belly. Something like… a muscle relaxing that he hadn't realized he'd been clenching. Shirou shook his head, then kind of regretted it. "Nah, you did good. I'd have tried to get her to agree to the same thing."

An agreeable silence. Assassin didn't seem like the kind of person to carry much of a conversation if he didn't feel like he had anything to say.

"We haven't really had a chance to… talk," Shirou said after a few moments. "Have we?"

"**Thy first night as my Contractor was hectic," **Assassin agreed.

Shirou struggled to a sitting position. It was really difficult, with his limbs feeling like the bones had been replaced with jelly. That, and the pounding headache. He opened his eyes, winced, and settled for a squint. "Well, I'm Shirou Emiya. It's nice to meet you." He held out his hand.

The silence stretched long enough that Shirou was almost convinced that Assassin wouldn't speak again. He put his hand in his lap, self conscious. "**I am Servant Assassin. If the title Old Man of the Mountain means something to thee, know that I am he. If it does not, then further specification will not assist thee." **Another silence. "**It is… nice to meet thee."**

Shirou laughed. "Okay, then." He looked down at his hand, and his smile faded. The red insignia inscribed onto it, two parts bright and one part dim. It meant so much, but not to him. To him, it meant… pain. But no, he couldn't think that way. "I've never heard that before. Or… I don't think I have. Old Man of the Mountain?"

Assassin sounded amused. "**Then perhaps my legend has not been passed down to this epoch, and yet my abilities appear to remain undiminished by it. Curious."**

"You didn't seem diminished to me," Shirou ventured. Images of the raw power that had suffused Assassin the night before flashed through his mind. Images that were all he had. He hadn't gotten a great look at the Servant in action, for obvious reasons.

Assassin made a noise that could have been a chuckle. "**I am diminished, my Contractor. Just not by that."**

_You are simply insufficient as a Master_, the bastard priest said in his mind with a smug smile. Shirou's smile faded. "Because I'm so weak."

"**As I said to thee: my power does not lie within the realm of the arcane. The knowledge I possess on the subject is cursory at best,"** Assassin explained. "**And recall that there is more than one kind of power. Lack of ability in magic does not preclude power, or even heroism, nor is it an indicator of strength of character. However… In this case, yes, I believe that thy magic circuits are at fault. They cannot provide the energy that I require."**

Shirou sighed. "Well, I don't want you to have to be stuck invisible all the time. Can't we do something about that?"

"**My current state is more complex than mere invisibility, but it does present a problem. The War will be difficult to win if thy Servant cannot manifest."**

"Well, then Rin can win, right?" Shirou shrugged. "I don't really care about getting the Grail. I just don't want someone bad to do something horrible with it."

Assassin did not respond.

"Anyway, we'll figure it out," he continued. "Like Kotomine said, Rin's smart. She might be able to figure something out."

"**Hm."**

Shirou flexed his fingers experimentally. They were stiff. "Old Man of the Mountain…" he mused quietly. Images of parched desert and pouring blood flashed before his eyes. "You were an assassin in life too, weren't you?"

"**I have been many things," **Assassin said, but he didn't sound like he was intentionally dodging the question. "**Life is a difficult thing to define, in my case. But yes, I was an assassin. Perhaps not in the same way that thy imagination might suggest. I did not kill for anything so base as money, nor did I gather disciples for my own power, nor did I put my blade in my targets' backs."**

Shirou blinked. Many questions sprang to mind, and it was an effort to only ask one. "You had disciples?"

"**I was the first grandmaster of a sect known as the Hashashin." **Assassin sounded nostalgic. "**Their existence is no longer any great secret, though one of my foundational precepts **_**was**_ **discretion. They were destroyed nearly a thousand years ago."**

"I'm sorry," Shirou said. It seemed like the right thing to say.

"**I am not. They performed their duty admirably, and when the evening bell tolled their time, they faced their end with dignity."** He spoke as though talking about an old friend who passed away long enough ago that the wound no longer hurt. "**I slew the last man myself. What I began, I also needed to end. It was my duty to complete the circle."**

_That's a little disturbing, isn't it?_ Shirou had no idea how to respond. _Sorry you had to kill people who looked up to you? Hope you're doing okay, bud? _Nothing really seemed to fit. "Hey, uh. We're safe now, though, right?"

"**I do not sense the presences of any Servants other than myself and Archer."**

Shirou stiffened, though he wasn't immediately sure why. "Archer survived?"

"**His wounds were severe, so Rin is dedicating the better part of her magical energy to allowing him to heal. She estimates that most of his functionality will return over the next few days."**

"That's good," Shirou said. His initial feeling of relief was that they wouldn't be defenseless, but that was quickly replaced by an intense self loathing for such a selfish thought. He should be happy Archer was still breathing for his own sake, even if he didn't like the guy. "Good to hear."

He searched the room for a clock, and his eyes landed on a digital alarm clock by the bed. It was almost one in the afternoon. Had he ever slept so late in his life? He didn't think so. And still, he didn't want to get up.

He pushed the sheets off of himself, and after a short struggle to untangle his legs, he swung them over the side of the bed. "Okay. Here goes." He slid gently off the bed and planted his feet. His legs wobbled so badly he thought he might fall, but he was able to steady himself. He steeled himself, then hobbled toward the door. "I'm going to go find Tohsaka."

"**She should be somewhere in the house. Would thou like me to assist in thine search?"**

"Please," Shirou gasped. He wasn't even halfway to the door, and he was already winded.

"**Then I shall return."**

Shirou hobbled the rest of the way to the door alone, then leaned on the frame to try to catch his breath.

* * *

Mist hung over the neighborhood, and Sakura hummed softly to herself as she walked down those familiar sidewalks that she could have navigated in her sleep. A tote bag was slung over one shoulder, a light basket of groceries carried in the other hand. She swung it a little as she walked, keeping rough time with it.

It wasn't a school day, and normally she let him be on Sundays, but yesterday, she'd noticed Senpai had been running low on some necessities. Rice and milk and butter. Not much, but he hadn't seen it. She hadn't said anything, because she liked to surprise him with things like this. To be thoughtful, and see that smile spread across his face. That one that said she'd done something good. That she'd done something worthwhile. A smile to match the one in her mind spread across her face.

She liked that feeling, and she wondered if doing kind things for her own gratification made her selfish, and the smile faded.

She wondered that a lot, but she wondered it a little less when she was with him.

She stumbled, her foot catching on a bit of broken sidewalk, breaking off her humming with a quiet squeak. She caught herself before she hit the ground, but it was a near thing with the basket unbalancing her. The walkway outside Senpai's house seemed to have descended into disrepair remarkably quickly, she thought. Had it been damaged like this yesterday? It couldn't have been. She'd have noticed.

Still, she didn't allow herself to worry until she pushed open his gate and stepped up to his house.

The open doorway yawned wide like a hungry animal, the familiar hallway stretching away from her more something alive and malevolent than like a room. A moment of panic. A moment of rising tension like a discordant symphony of violins wailing in her ear. Before she could be overwhelmed and carried off-

A sense of eerie calm descended upon Sakura Matou, and she entered the house with cold, detached eyes that belied the screaming and gibbering that threatened to burst forth. There were signs of a struggle. Cracks in the wall there, where something heavy had landed hard.

(Senpai's head slammed into the drywall hard enough to crack the skull by inhuman hands and _she will not think of that.)_

Here, a small splatter of blood. Not enough to be from a serious injury, but enough for her to recognize it.

(Senpai's veins open and bleeding as he presses a desperate hand to stop the bleeding and _she will not think of that.)_

Shattered glass at the base of one wall. Broken furniture.

(Senpai's poor body slammed repeatedly through heavy wood until his bones are dust and _she will not think of that.)_

She catalogued each item as she passed through, and filed it away.

(There is wailing all around her and in her but it is not her.)

Rubble in the hallway. Round holes and gouges in the floor and the walls.

(A sword that passes through Senpai's body and into the wall behind _she will not think)_

A tear wide enough for a person to pass through in the screen door to the backyard. Outside, more damage. Furrows torn into the dirt and grass. A ragged hole in the side of the shed, like a small bomb had gone off.

She knew. She knew what this was. She knew.

She refused to know.

(Burned blasted dismantled to component atoms _she will not)_

Her eyes tracked it all, and she knew what it meant long before she admitted it to herself.

She _knew_, and she hadn't _tried_ hard enough to stop it before it happened.

She'd known this would happen, but she hadn't let herself know it.

Not signs of a struggle. Signs of battle.

Signs of war.

The one that had done this had been stronger than a human. And if they weren't human, they were there for a reason. And if they were there for a reason, there was only one reason that would lead to-

"_Senpai, your hand," she asks, pressing her own to her mouth. There is something there, something like a cut or a bruise, and she hates it when he gets hurt like that. It doesn't happen often, he's usually so careful, but-_

_He pulls up the sleeve. The cut is not a cut is not a bruise it is a mark. A familiar mark, but one that is unformed, indistinct. No. A breath hitches in her chest and- _

_No, no, no. She will not think that. She will not consider that. That would be too much, too cruel, and she will not allow herself to believe that fate would be so heartless. Fate __**is**_ _cruel, she knows, but she suffers so that the people she loves will be safe. It's the logic of a child, there is not a finite amount of suffering in the universe, she knows this, but it keeps her sane in the face of horror that most people could never imagine._

_She suffers so Senpai will not suffer. She suffers so Shinji, heartless though he can be, will not suffer. She suffers so her friends at the Archery club, distant as they are, will not suffer. _

"_**grandfather…" her own voice. halting. fearful. her fear cannot be changed because he is fear. "do all masters need to be killed?"**_

_**a laugh. laconic. warm. "well, you can keep one or two as playthings, if you like." the perfect doting old man.**_

_**skip. time is fluid. memory imperfect.**_

"_**we will eliminate those that are dangerous to keep alive, but those who will not be obstacles can be spared."**_

_**she must fight she will fight there is nothing but the fight she will-**_

_**she will-**_

_**she-**_

_**she cannot.**_

"_**i will give rider to my brother"**_

_**body tensing. shaking. it has not yet begun but with these words her fate has sealed and the crawling burning horror will begin and she must be ready or she will not be herself anymore.**_

_**a rueful smile. a gracious spread of the hands. "it cannot be helped." no anger. no vindictive edge. more words. more meaningless babble, but there is relief. relief until something cuts through. "although" her grandfather says. as though an offhand thought and nothing more. "the tohsaka kid's chances look pretty good, don't you think?"**_

_**her sister…?**_

_**her sister.**_

_**her sister her sister her sistersistersistersistersister**_

_**will kill him.**_

_**but that won't happen. she tells herself this. a thing she must believe. a thing she must make herself believe. **_

_**she has given up the only card she could have played to protect him.**_

_**only masters must die in this war and he will not die because he is not-**_

"_I guess I cut myself fixing dinner last night," he laughed, playfully embarrassed, pulling his sleeve back down over it._

_He is-_

_No._

_He could be-_

_No._

_Senpai is not-_

"A Master," she breathed, and the coiled fear threatened to burst forth. She grabbed it by the throat and forced it back down. The Feeling Sakura screamed wordlessly, silently, while the Surviving Sakura took over.

That's what she told herself, at least. She couldn't stop the wailing and the screaming and the _boiling churning clawing_ of the living fear inside of her. Her heart beat too hard but not fast enough. Her mind ran like lightning but didn't move at all. Her body moved through space in eons and in milliseconds. Everything about her was too much and nothing at all.

This realization… This realization.

Senpai was a Master.

_(She'd known this would happen when she saw him practicing in the shed.) _

This realization.

_(She should have stopped him.)_

Senpai was a participant in the Holy Grail War.

_(She could have done something to save him.)_

The same one she'd refused to be a part of.

_**(Now, she had no way to protect him.)**_

Out of sight had been out of mind but it was no longer either. Senpai had a Servant or did he even have that yet and someone else had tried to kill him. Someone else had maybe succeeded, and no, she forced Feeling Sakura back down into her temporary prison. Senpai was not dead, he was out there in the city, somewhere. Maybe hurt. Maybe in hiding. (Her breath came faster, but she didn't notice.) She had to find him before one of the other masters-

**(HE IS GOING TO DIE AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN)**

Shinji.

Shinji would kill him. Shinji would kill him and be happy to do it and she'd handed him the loaded gun herself. (Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, but it didn't matter.) She loved Nii-san, despite everything, and she didn't want him to get hurt, but she knew him, too. He was not a good person.

(Neither was she, but she hid it better.)

Rin would kill him. She wouldn't enjoy it, maybe, but she would do it without hesitation. Her sister would take everything she had left.

And there were four other Masters, all of whom would be out for his blood. She had to do something, but she couldn't do it alone. She needed to find Senpai. She needed someone. She needed… she needed _help_.

She needed to find her Nii-san.

* * *

_Thanks for sticking around, everyone. The And Hell Followed With Him train got no brakes._

_Next Chapter: Listless_


	8. Listless

_A brief content warning for abuse later in the chapter._

* * *

Rin still had not slept by the time Shirou came downstairs, and she was becoming very zen about it.

"Shirou? If you don't cook something for me very, very soon, I'm going to feed you to Berserker myself," she said sweetly.

Tranquil as a pond.

She'd tried to sleep, but when she'd laid down on the couch (a couch! like some kind of animal!), all that had filled her mind were Berserker's cacophonous roars, and the weight of Shirou trembling and wailing voicelessly in her arms. She tolerated that for a little while, but it turned out that her limit on this one was about five minutes, so she'd gotten right back up.

First order of business was a change of clothes, and her legs were so leaden that it had been tempting to just change right there in her bedroom. Shirou was probably going to be unconscious for the next week, after all, so what was the risk? The less walking around she had to do, the better.

Her shirt had been halfway off before she remembered that Assassin was probably still in the room, just sort of silently existing, and she'd sheepishly slunk off to the next room to do that. Then, of course, she remembered the existence of _baths_, and had dragged herself further down the hallway to the guest bathroom, slowly shedding clothing as she went (Archer was still unconscious at this point, but she'd forgotten he was actually in the house), at which point she collapsed in the tub.

Ten minutes probably passed before she remembered to turn the water on. She kicked weakly at the faucet with her foot.

Her moan of relief when the scalding water hit her aching, limp body was probably more than a little indecent, but unless Assassin was the type of guy to peep on naked girls in the bath, no one would have heard. She didn't… she didn't _think_ he was, but she gave the empty corner of the bathroom a suspicious glare over the rim of the tub anyway, just in case.

She floated there, semi-conscious, for long enough that the water (a cloudy brownish-red after most of the crud had soaked off her body, but she struggled to care) had started to go tepid, and her fingers were pruny. She drained the bath and filled it again with fresh, newly-hot water. This time, she forced herself to sit up and actually go about the process of getting clean. She'd never realized how much _energy_ it took to wash her hair, and in a fit of vindictive rage seriously considered cutting it all off just so she wouldn't have to deal with it. The only thing that stopped her, in her more-than-slightly-delirious haze, was remembering that the nearest scissors were downstairs, and fuck stairs right now.

When she finally pulled herself from the bath, less dripping wet and more waterlogged like a drowned rat, she slowly, gingerly, dressed herself in the yellow, cat-face-print pajamas that had been the first thing she could think to grab. They were comfortable, but they were also deeply embarrassing, and it was possible that Shirou would have to die if she was still wearing them when he woke up.

But god, they were just so _soft_.

The stairs took about five minutes to descend, and when she reached the bottom, clutching the railing for dear life, she saw Archer, his eyes open, watching her with a barely-concealed glimmer of joy in his face.

Her face twisted into something ugly. "Do not. Speak."

Archer mimed zipping his lips shut, but his grin was wide enough that she found herself imagining the top of his head just sort of tipping backward and dangling there.

Morbid. What the fuck was her problem?

She shuffled closer, grimacing. "So I know you can get around just fine in spirit form, but can you do anything useful like this?"

Archer shook his head from where he was seated. He was still a mangled mess, but at least he wasn't bleeding all over her furniture anymore.

"How long until you can?"

Archer shrugged.

Irritation thudded distantly in her chest. "Don't be a jackass. You can talk."

"A couple hours before I can get up and do household chores. I should be able to fight by tomorrow, but I won't be back up to full strength for a few days. It'll go faster if you set up a transfer circle." He smirked, but it looked like it hurt his face a little to do so. "I don't think either of us are up for anything more direct." At least he was feeling strong enough to make his voice sound absolutely infuriating.

"Gross. I'll…" She stared longingly at a big, comfy chair in the corner of the room. It called her. It beckoned her. "I'll go do that, then."

Archer gestured grandly at his busted body. "You know where to find me."

It took almost an hour to get the circle set up in the basement because she kept fucking up the linework, and then another fifteen minutes to check her work to her satisfaction. She called him over, shouting plaintively up the stairs, and he took his sweet-ass time getting there. "You called?"

She pointed. "Circle. In."

"Am I your dog, now?" he asked dryly, but he kept hobbling anyway. "I don't think that was in the contract."

Rin sighed, forcing down a cruel comment. "Look, I'm…" _Ugh, do I have to say this?_ But it would be true, and her Servant had taken a whole lot more than a bullet for her at this point. "I'm glad you made it back. Maybe you're not such a weakling after all."

"Oh, big words," Archer said, but there was the ghost of a smile on his face. "I'm touched by your overwhelming sentimentality, Rin."

"Shut up. So I saw that sword you had," she said in as casual a tone as possible, determined to change the subject, as she poured a bit of her magic into the glowing red lines to get the energy flow started. Once it was going, it would mostly just keep rolling on its own, but she'd have to at least halfway pay attention that it didn't drain her dry.

"I have a lot of swords," Archer said blandly, stepping into the center of the circle. The lines flashed brighter for a moment, and then settled back into a mild glow.

"You know what I mean," she sighed; out of sheer spite, she sent a small electric shock through the link, and her janky old busted up Servant jumped a little. _Serves you right_, she thought, then felt a little guilty. He was already almost in two pieces. "I know my mythology. That was Excalibur, wasn't it?"

Archer rolled his eyes, but there was a tightness in his forehead that hadn't been there before. "Hardly. I know how much you'd like me to be, but I am _not_ King Arthur."

"But-" Rin started to protest.

He held up a hand, and she was just tired enough that she let herself be interrupted. "What I do…" He sighed. "Think of it like projection. It's a similar principal. It helps me adapt and keep my enemies guessing. None of the weapons you've seen me use are my Noble Phantasm, but I think you probably knew that."

Rin could feel her brow furrowing thoughtfully, but god, she was so sleepy. "Projection magic sucks, though," she said bluntly.

Archer chuckled. "You're not wrong, but you're not right, either. The one you saw me create was the closest I could get to replicating that holy sword. It was a shitty copy, if I'm going to be honest. Far from my best work. I used Excalibur's legend as a base blueprint, but I couldn't create something of equal power. Even I have my limits."

"Work on that," Rin said. "I know a little about Excalibur. We could use the really powerful version that shoots beams."

With a flourish of his not-broken arm, Archer gave a humble bow that absolutely dripped with sarcasm. "As you command, Master. One laser-gun sword, coming right up."

She zapped him again before she could remember not to.

Getting back to the main level _again_ felt Sisyphean, but she did eventually manage it.

And just when she was ready to try sleeping again, Shirou fell down the stairs.

She didn't burst into angry tears, but it was close.

* * *

"**Contractor, move more slowly. Thy body is weak."**

Shirou wasn't walking so much as his was perpetually falling forward, with his legs moving just fast enough to catch him with every step. "I'm okay," he panted. "I'll-" His foot made contact with something that wasn't the floor, and it was not stable. He had just enough time to say "huh?" before his feet were no longer under him.

He didn't remember tumbling down the stairs, but he sure did find himself in a heap at the bottom of them, with Rin staring at him from across the room in wide-eyed, open-mouthed befuddlement.

Shirou waved tentatively at her.

She buried her face in her hands.

"I'm okay," he offered truthfully.

This did not make her look any happier, unfortunately. She rolled her face down her hands, grimacing… and then she froze.

Shirou stared at her, not comprehending.

Her face went bright red.

Shirou frowned.

Rin stomped over, rage deeper than any he'd ever seen on her face before carved into her face like the visage of a malevolent god. She loomed over him silently.

Fear prickled the back of his neck. "Uh… Tohsaka? Are you okay?"

She leaned down, and the look of murderous fury morphed into a smile that was somehow even more terrifying. "Shirou?"

He swallowed. "Yeah?"

She gave his head a gentle, condescending pat that promised intense, brutal violence to come. "If you don't cook something for me very, very soon, I'm going to feed you to Berserker myself," she said, still smiling, then leaned down over him, tore away the black bra that had apparently been wrapped around his foot, and marched back up the stairs.

Shirou's face went bright red. "Sorry," he called weakly after her. He waited. She didn't respond. With a sigh, he looked in the direction he assumed Assassin was. "She probably didn't hear me."

"**I'm sure,"** Assassin said from the opposite direction.

Ten minutes later, he was shuffling through Rin's kitchen and feeling a lot of conflicting things. He was in awe at her equipment; her stovetop had probably cost more than his house, and it was polished to a mirror sheen. A knife block bristled with cutting implements in a variety of shapes and sizes that he'd never seen before. Her fridge was so big he could almost have fit comfortably inside it.

On the other hand, her ingredient stores were… lackluster. Most of it was dried or canned, and there was distressingly little _green_. Frankly, he was pleasantly surprised when he stumbled on a bag of white rice. "Do you know if Archer is still alive? He didn't like… die in the last few minutes, right?"

"**I sense his presence below."**

Shirou paused, elbow-deep in pots and pans. "Below, like… in the basement, or in hell?"

"**The basement."**

"Oh. Well… good." He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Relief, then irritation, then guilt that he was irritated that someone hadn't died. _Not like he would have given me the same courtesy. _The clatter resumed as he took stock of what he had to work with. There were more varieties than he could actually identify, and none of it had been sorted with any rhyme or reason that he could see. "How does she live like this?"

"**Comfortably and complacently, it would seem."**

Shirou stood, narrowly avoiding banging his head on the counter, and started shuffling through a cabinet. Why was there so much peanut butter? "I don't think she's complacent. I mean, she's not lazy."

"**People who have more money than they can spend in a lifetime come to rely on it. It becomes a crutch."**

"I guess," Shirou said doubtfully. "It'd be nice to have more money to spend on meals. Feeding three people every day isn't cheap."

"**Thou hast family? Thy home seemed rather bare to support more than thee."**

"No," he started, then paused. "I mean, kind of? We're not related or anything, but Fuji-nee comes and mooches off of me a lot, and she's sort of like my big sister?" It was strange how normal this conversation felt. He actually had to remind himself that he was talking to a scary ghost. "She's a handful, but we kind of look out for each other. She's a teacher at the school I go to, though, so she likes to use that as a weapon." He still had yet to find even a single bottle of soy sauce. This was embarrassing. "And then there's Sakura. Sakura Matou. She's a year younger than me, but she's kind of my best friend. She usually comes over to help me cook breakfast." He shrugged. "That all probably sounds pretty boring to someone like you, huh?"

Assassin was strangely silent.

Shirou frowned. "Assassin?"

"**Tell me about this Sakura," **he said pensively, his voice coming from behind Shirou.

Shirou blinked. "Um, well…" It was funny; he could think of a million ways to describe Fuji-nee, but when it came to Sakura… She was just Sakura. "She's sweet. About a year and a half ago, I got hurt pretty bad at my job. I really couldn't use my arm at all. And I didn't know Sakura very well at the time, because she was just my friend Shinji's sister. She'd probably talked to me about a half dozen times in my whole life. She was so shy and quiet, and I think she was a little nervous about me back then." He opened a drawer, expecting to find silverware, and instead found it stuffed full of old pencils and notebooks. He pulled one out and opened it to the first page. It was empty. "But she showed up at my house, and started trying to help take care of me. Little stuff, you know? Cooking and cleaning, since it was hard with my arm. It must have been because she thought Shinji would be worried about me, since we weren't close before that." He smiled faintly. "She was hopeless. The kind of cook who'd throw water on a grease fire, just because she didn't know any better." As he spoke, he tore about a piece of paper and started scribbling a shopping list onto it. "But she wanted to learn, and I found out that it was fun to teach her, and she never stopped coming by, even when I was all healed. It was kind of inspiring. She tried so hard to be a better cook, even when she got hurt doing it, and now she's almost better than I am. You still there?"

"**I am."**

"Sorry, you just seemed quiet. Anyway, she used to be really… I don't know. Shy, and…" He grasped for words. "Not afraid, exactly, but like if you moved too fast, she'd just be gone." Anger stirred deep within him, and he pushed it away. He had an idea about all that, but… That was a long time ago. "But she's really come out of her shell. She smiles now. She smiles a lot." He found himself smiling as well at the thought. "I hope she really is happier, now."

"**Is the girl a magus?"**

Shirou laughed, tapping the pencil on the paper. "No way. She's got no idea about any of that. She's the most normal person I know."

"**Hm."**

"What? What's hm?"

Assassin spoke with steel in his voice. "**Dost thou trust Sakura Matou?"**

"Of course I do. Why wouldn't I trust her?" he replied with a snort. He added _panko_ to the quickly lengthening list. Really, he just needed to buy a fully stocked pantry to salvage this mess, but he didn't have the budget for it.

Assassin was silent.

Shirou hesitated, the question really sinking in. After a moment, he put the pencil down and turned to face the voice, planting his feet in an implicit challenge. "Assassin, why wouldn't I trust her?"

"**Thou mentioned her brother."**

He blinked, the sudden change in subject throwing him for a loop. "Yeah, Shinji. What about him?"

"**Dost thou trust Shinji Matou?" **Assassin asked in exactly the same tone of voice.

Shirou opened his mouth to say "yes" as little more than a reflex, but he hesitated. This wasn't Sakura he was talking to, or even Tohsaka. "Honestly… No. He's… He used to be a good person, but something inside him changed." Phantom pain in his knuckles ached. "But he's not a Magus either, so it doesn't really matter much one way or the other, does it?"

"**Dost thou know of any other Matous?"**

"I met their grandfather the other night. He was a little creepy, but he seemed friendly." Shirou frowned. "Actually, he did say some weird stuff to me. Like... he knew me. He seemed confused, though. I think his name was Zouken." He paused, trying to think of why Assassin was so hung up on this topic. "Assassin? Did you know someone?"

"**There was a man I became aware of named Kariya Matou. He was an honorable man, stricken with a cruel curse that had corroded his spirit as much as his body. I know not why he fought, but he had the sense of a man doing what he believed was the right thing, though he destroyed himself and the person he loved in the end."**

"I don't think Sakura's ever mentioned a Kariya," Shirou said slowly.

"**She would have been young when he died,"** Assassin mused. "**It is unsurprising if she does not remember him. Perhaps he was an outlier in the Matou family. I do not believe it is completely unheard of."**

"If you're implying that Sakura is an enemy, you're wrong," Shirou growled, surprised at his own heat. "She's _not involved._ Not in something like this."

Assassin actually sighed. "**Thy trust is thine own. Nothing I say will shake it. Perhaps her brother is involved. Perhaps this grandfather you speak of. Perhaps Kariya was an amateur, and none of the larger Matou clan have any knowledge of magic. I merely advise caution, and to consider the possibility."**

Of course not, he wanted to say. Instead, he forced himself to relax, unclenching fists he hadn't realized were tight, returning to the list. "How do you know _any _people, anyway? You were only summoned last night."

"**I took part in the Fourth Holy Grail War," **Assassin replied simply.

The pencil clattered to the counter, and Shirou found himself turning again in disbelief. "You… were there?" Flames danced on the back of his neck. "You were part of that?"

"**The destruction was not entirely my doing, but yes. I was summoned as that War's Assassin as well."**

Goosebumps rippled across his skin. Even hearing that… he was part of the conflict that lead to

_hell on earth_

all of that death and destruction.

He knew Assassin was a killer. It was implied in the title. But to be confronted with the reality of it was like being immersed in boiling ice.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"**It was irrelevant. Very few loose ends were left."**

His teeth creaked. "You mean everyone involved is dead."

"**Not everyone. Three still lived at the end of the fight. One is dead. One I do not know the whereabouts of, but I believe him to be irrelevant. And one is the priest."**

"_Kotomine_ was a Master?"

"**Yes. He and my Master were the last standing. His power was broken."**

Shirou began connecting dots. "That's why you hated him so much, without even seeing him.

"**It is one reason."**

"And…" His eyes widened. "You _won_ the last Grail War?"

"**For a certain definition of 'won'. I was the last Servant standing, but the Grail was destroyed."**

"Destroyed?"

"**My master believed the Holy Grail was evil. I did not see the things he did, but I am inclined to agree. I destroyed it myself."**

A thousand questions swirled confusingly around Shirou like a cloud of insects, but… did this information change anything? Did it mean his objective had changed? Whether the Holy Grail was something inherently destructive, or merely something with the potential to destroy in the wrong hands… The worst case scenario remained the same. "What happened when you broke it?"

"**My form was obliterated at the moment of the Grail's death. I saw not what transpired after."**

"But if you had to guess?"

"**There was likely a backlash. There was not time to formulate a safe disposal method. We brought it as far from the people as we could in the limited time we had, to the center of the park, but I do not know how effective we were. My master was bathed in its curse in the process, but he would not allow me to touch it directly."**

"The park," he breathed. "A backlash…" His vision wavered. Flames and screams and- Grasping at the counter for balance, he forced his shaking hand into a fist and punched his thigh hard enough to bruise. The images receded.

Assassin was silent for a long moment, while Shirou recovered. Until his fist stopped shaking.

"**The thing that haunts thee. It was ten years ago, was it not?"**

"You already know the answer to that," Shirou said quietly. His breath suddenly seemed deafening in the silence. "Was destroying it the right thing to do?"

"**I believe it was. No good could have come from such a thing."**

"Then that's it, right?" His heartbeat was beginning to return to normal. He just… had to bottle all that up again, and he'd be fine. "We need to find out how to destroy it for good, without a… backlash."

"**Indeed."**

"Then…" Shirou turned the idea over in his head. If anyone in this house was least useful when it came to formulating solutions to magical problems, it was probably him. Besides, he had _cooking_ to do. "Hey, do me a favor."

Assassin was silent, which he took as assent.

"Can you go tell Tohsaka everything you just told me? I think she needs to hear all that stuff about the Grail being… you know, evil." She probably wouldn't believe it, actually. Still, though, she had to know. "Actually, give her like ten minutes. She seemed pretty cranky, so she probably needs to sleep."

"**Should thou not be a part of such a conversation?"**

Shirou shrugged. "Do I need to be? I don't know anything about magic, really. I'd probably just get in the way."

"**It is unseemly for a Master to take such a passive role in his own affairs."**

He threw up a hand in frustration, stuffing the list into his pocket. "Alright, we can tell her when we get back, then."

"**Where art thou planning to go?" **Assassin sounded dubious at best.

"Tohsaka said I should cook, right? I've gotta get some groceries." He made his way back to the stairs, carefully watching for any stray underwear that might betray him once again. As he looked down, he caught a whiff of something rank. Oh, that was him, wasn't it? "Oh, I need a shower."

"**Is that prudent?"**

"A shower?" Shirou snorted. "I doubt Tohsaka is going to run out of water in a place like this."

"**Leaving the premises."**

"Oh, uh. We've gotta eat, don't we? Well, us regular humans, anyway." He paused. "Do Servants eat? Should I make enough for Archer?" He didn't want to, but if Archer was here, it would be rude _not_ to. He was a guest, after all.

Assassin's voice remained a constant distance behind him as he walked. "**We do not require food for sustenance, but it can supplement the mana we receive from our Masters." **

_Damn it. "_All the more reason I need to go, then." He put his hand on the bannister, then paused. He tilted his head back, giving Assassin the respect of looking at him, even if he couldn't see him. "Your old master. Was he a good man?"

"**In the end, he was."**

"Who was he?"

There was no sound but the distant ticking of a grandfather clock.

"Assassin?"

"**To speak his name would be to diminish his sacrifice. He was not a man who desired fame or notoriety."**

That seemed uncharacteristically sentimental of him, but Shirou decided to let it lie, for now. "Well, I hope I can live up to his example."

"**Indeed."**

* * *

Shinji squealed as his back hit the wall, his head colliding with the brick of the alley wall with a dull _thunk_. He stared at her with wide, incredulous eyes, before his gaze flickered to the pink-haired servant standing casually a few meters away. "I'm your Master, Rider! Help me!"

Rider shrugged with a bland, indifferent expression, her crop resting comfortably on her shoulder. "No... don't... stop..." She blew a bright pink bubble at him. It popped, and he stiffened in Sakura's grip.

She'd found Shinji at his favorite cafe; gaudy, expensive, and generally-empty as it was, she knew it made him feel powerful and rich. Even in the midst of something as dangerous as the Holy Grail War, he wouldn't pass up his daily opportunity to be fawned on by his inexplicable legion of admirers. That's where she'd found him — in the middle of a group of four girls, all of whom seemed smitten with his easy confidence.

Rider was lounging in the corner, thick white boots up on the table. She'd traded the lingerie for a white leather jacket, aviator sunglasses, and the shortest shorts Sakura had ever seen. She was pretty sure that the shorts said "delicious." It was less conspicuous than the frilly underwear, but only in the sense that a cannon was less conspicuous than a bomber. She looked supremely bored as she sipped coffee out of a heavy ceramic mug that was masquerading as dainty porcelain.

A deep shame gripped Sakura as she gazed upon her former Servant. _You could just take Rider back right now._ Instinctually, she knew that she could, and there would be nothing that Shinji could do to stop her. By all accounts, it would be the wisest move. Then she really would have the power to protect Senpai from the horrors of war.

But...

Servants were always reflections of their Masters in some way. Always. Rider was a reminder of the kind of person she truly was; the side of her that she kept hidden deep inside where no one but her would ever have to see it. If Senpai knew Rider was hers, he would know what kind of person Sakura was.

He thought she was good. He thought she was pure. The truth was enough to lace every breath with anxiety and to cruelly tighten her chest. Her thoughts were not lily-white. She was not unsullied. She hated. She was just as much of a monster as Rider, but that wasn't the worst of it.

Sakura was _jealous _of Rider. Senpai respected Sakura, but it was a false respect—respect based on a lie. She was _desperate _for respect, and she knew in her heart of hearts that she would never have or deserve it. Rider's carefree attitude. Her casual confidence. Her strength and her ability to make people fear her and want her. Rider never doubted herself, or had to remind herself that she was less than mud, or feared retribution. She lived life the way she wanted to live it, and damn anyone who said otherwise. Sakura _envied_ Rider that.

It really wasn't any wonder she'd summoned such a Servant, when her own heart was so filthy.

Working up the courage to approach her brother had been hard, but he'd helped break through that particular wall. "Excuse me, ladies," he'd said smoothly, bowing deeply in an apology that the girls took as sincere, if exaggerated, but that Sakura instantly recognized as patronizing. "It seems that my poor, darling sister needs some help."

Shinji didn't think she'd seen how pathetically he behaved when Rider was looking at him, but she had seen. That was the image she had to hold in her head, no matter how melancholic it made her.

_Nii-san is finally being treated the way he's always treated-_

She should not be having such thoughts. Shame mingled with the bone-deep anxiety that coursed through her.

The girls had glanced over in her direction, and one of them actually giggled. When she hid her face behind her hair in shame, it wasn't an act, but she'd reminded herself that she wasn't here for _her_.

When Shinji had approached, smiling tersely, he'd put a heavy, threatening hand on her shoulder. It was an old tactic, but no less effective for its familiarity. "Yo. What's up, Sakura?" It all almost spilled out right there in the cafe, in front of all those classmates.

She'd shrunk away, and her voice was a mumble. "It's… something important. About…" She'd withdrawn further. "You know. The _thing_."

Shinji had grimaced, but he'd also put his other hand on her shoulder and spun her around, marching her without another word out to the alley behind the shop. Somewhere they'd be alone. That gave her time to think. To muster up her courage.

She'd never defied Shinji before. In small ways, once or twice, but not like this.

_It's not for you, Sakura._

She wasn't standing up for herself. Not really. It didn't change the consequences that there would be. Shinji would hurt her. Badly. (_Maybe bad enough that-_ She stopped herself.) But if it meant that she could stop something bad from happening...

_It's standing up for him._

Then it would be worth it. There was a finite amount of misery in the world, and she would draw Senpai's to her, and he would be safe.

_You don't deserve protection, but he does._

"So what is it?" Shinji had let go of her to cross his arms over his chest, skepticism on his face. Rider followed a good distance behind, leaning idly against the wall, pretending to check her nails while she surreptitiously scanned the street outside. She still had the ceramic mug in her other hand; Sakura was pretty sure it belonged to the cafe and was not supposed to leave with the customers. "If this isn't worth my time, I'll-"

Before she could give herself time to think, she'd darted forward, planted one hand on his chest, and halfway tackled him backward.

In the present, a few different emotions flashed across Shinji's face; rage, fear, careful consideration. Then, like none of it had ever been there at all, a mask of cool arrogance slid over his features. That smug smile that promised so much but actually said so little. The half-lidded, sleepy condescension in his eyes. "Sakura, what do you think you're doing?" He taunted slowly, as if he hadn't been whining for help just a few seconds before. "You know what happens when you touch me."

Her throat closed and her body shook and-

_A closed fist, poised to strike hovers over her. She's bruised. battered. There's a trickle of blood out of the corner of her mouth. He's always been careful not to leave marks where people can see, never this blatant. _

"_What did I do?" she asks._

_He spits off to the side, and his mouth twists into something hideous as the next blow comes._

-an apology rose in her chest.

Part of Sakura quailed. An old reflex. A powerful reflex. But not one that was useful right now. Surviving Sakura knew that sometimes, to get along, you had to know how to take a hit, and she _would_ pay for this later. She wouldn't let herself forget that. _I will pay for this later, and I will deserve it_ was an incessant mantra rattling around her skull.

But for now, she also remembered-

_Senpai's knuckles are scabbed over when he answers the door that morning, and his lip looks like it had been split the night before, but his smile is as bright and welcoming as ever. "Good morning, Sakura!" _

_She's frozen. Her mouth opens and closes like a beached fish. She can't stop noticing details. The scabs are on both hands. There's the hint of a healing bruise on his neck. A lifetime of walking on eggshells means that she is very good at noticing details. _

_He blinks at her, confused. He genuinely doesn't know what she suddenly looks so upset about, she realizes._

"_S-Senpai…" Her hands go to her mouth, and she knows how wide her eyes must be. "What happened? Are you okay?" But she knows before he answers._

_He doesn't stop smiling, but his eyes harden in a way she's never seen from him. A vein ticks in his neck, but he rubs the back of his neck like he's just embarrassed. "Oh, it's nothing. I'm okay! Just a little accident. You know."_

_How many times has she said something that had been done to her was just an accident? Her being clumsy? "Your hands…" she says, but all she can manage is a whisper._

_His smile fades just a hint, and it takes every fiber in her being not to flinch away from it. "Me and Shinji just had a disagreement yesterday. It's nothing to worry about. Guy stuff, you know."_

_She's horrified. Shinji has been hurt because she didn't hide herself well enough. She hadn't seen him the night before; how bad was it? How angry would he be at her? Her stomach clenches, but then something strange happens. There are tears in her eyes, but they aren't tears of fear or anger. Warmth spreads in her belly. _

_He blinks, worry suddenly written all over him. "Sakura? What is it? Are you okay?" He takes her hand, gentler than anyone she's ever known. "Come sit down, if you don't feel well. I'll make you some tea." He pulls her inside, but… no, that isn't right. It's not a forceful thing. He doesn't drag. He guides her. "Is the blueberry okay? I haven't gotten around to refilling your others."_

_She wants to say it, but her throat is too tight, and so she never actually does. _

_No one has ever fought for her before._

_No one that hadn't ended up dead._

She grit her teeth and ground her forearm harder into her brother's throat. He gave only a strangled grunt in response. He'd recover from the shock of being manhandled by _her_ of all people in a few moments, and then he would probably take that swing, so she had to be fast. "Listen to me, Nii-san. I need you to do something for me."

"You're threatening me for a favor?" he choked.

Feeling Sakura wanted her to let go. Feeling Sakura wanted her to apologize. Feeling Sakura wanted to burst into tears and beg for mercy.

Feeling Sakura was not in the driver's seat right now.

"You're going to do something for me, or I will take Rider back from you. You won't be a Master anymore. You'll go back to being nothing." She was proud of how cold her voice was, in a distant sort of way. It wasn't something she had a lot of practice with. Not out loud.

His eyes widened, and his gaze flicked from her to Rider and back. Rider, for her part, actually looked interested, and she'd stopped popping her gum for the moment.

"I need you to find Senpai. Shirou. He's involved. I need you to make sure he's okay." She leaned in closer. So close their noses were almost touching. "And if something happens to him, and I take Rider back, something will happen to you." She smiled, and something in her expression seemed to terrify him. "Understand?"

He nodded frantically, and she released him. He grabbed his throat and doubled over, coughing. It was more than over-dramatic, but she didn't feel the fear anymore. It would be back soon, and likely stronger than before, but in this moment, she almost enjoyed his exaggerated reaction—enjoyed that she could make him squirm like that.

_I'm glad I got to see that once,_ the cold, monstrous part of her whispered.

Feeling Sakura was wailing again, but she had to hold it together a little longer. She turned to Rider, who seemed to be having a tremendous time watching all of this, and this time her voice was more polite. "Will you please make sure he does that?" It still wasn't shaking. She marveled at that.

Rider blew a thoughtful bubble with her gum before replying. "You know what, kid, yeah. You impressed me. Maybe you do have a backbone after all." She winked, then leaned a little closer and patted Sakura's cheek. "It's cute! I'll make sure my doormat gets that done. It's just about the end of his free time for the day anyway."

Sakura gave a short bow. "Thank you." _Senpai's going to be okay. My brother won't do anything if she might hurt him. _It was almost enough all on its own to make her cry, but she had a lot of practice hiding her tears.

Rider waved her gratitude away. "Nah, it makes my job easier, too, if this kid is involved," she chirped. "I didn't expect anything useful out of that old geezer, but your old man actually had some good advice. I got my own thing I need to check out anyway."

Cold. No, not cold. Freezing. Goosebumps broke out all over her body, and she clamped her hands down hard on her thighs to keep them from shaking, but she kept it together well. "Do you mind if I ask?"

"Well, the only servant that's left unaccounted for is Assassin, right?"

Sakura nodded, but she didn't actually know that. She'd done everything she could to keep her head buried in the sand up until now.

Rider glanced at Shinji, who seemed to be working himself up into enough of a rage to come after her. "Hey, doormat! What'd I say? Touch your sister and you die."

Shinji made an "eep" sort of sound, and quickly looked down at his feet.

It didn't make her feel that much better, this time. Such a command would only protect her so long as Rider could see her.

"Anyway, your old man said that in the last war, the Assassin was a huge problem, yeah? Completely fucked him over." She frowned, and it was almost a pout. "He didn't say it, but I think that Assassin scared him. He thinks that if that Assassin enters the field, we've already lost. He wants to win this time, so he told me to make sure this Assassin isn't the same as last time."

It was everything she could do not to shake like a leaf. _Stupid, stupid Sakura._ She might have just put Senpai in more danger than he already had been, and there was no one to blame but herself. "And what if it is?"

Rider drained the rest of her coffee in one long pull, then let the mug fall carelessly to the ground. While she spoke, she idly kicked the larger pieces of shattered ceramic off to the side of the alley. "He didn't say. I didn't care enough to ask. He just said that we shouldn't worry about it. He's got 'a contingency.'"

* * *

_Thank you again for all your continuing support! I've been absolutely blown away by all the attention I've been getting. I love seeing what you all have to say!_

_Next chapter: The Scattered and Lost_


	9. The Scattered and the Lost

_Tomorrow is Easter and I'm gonna be obligated all day, so I'm posting a day early! Enjoy!_

* * *

Shirou wasn't more than a quarter of a mile from the grocery store when he realized that he was alone.

"You're keeping an eye out, right?" He asked over his shoulder as he walked. A couple people glanced at him askance, but no one wanted to be the one to ask the crazy, bruised teenager if he was okay. He'd turned his shirt inside out, which didn't exactly _hide_ the brown smears of dried blood and dirt, but it made it all a little less obvious. At least _he_ was clean. The voice he expected to hear, though, didn't respond.

He came to a halt on the busy sidewalk, frowning, as people veered around him like a lone island in a river. Nobody even looked at him as they passed. "Assassin?"

Nothing.

"That isn't great," he said, then kept walking. He was almost there, and _besides, _what Master would try to start a fight in broad daylight? It wasn't like he was going to be somewhere dark and secluded. It was a _grocery store_, after all. Nothing bad ever happened in a grocery store.

Inside the supermarket, it was easy to let the normalcy carry him away. Normally, he liked to shop local at a nearby market, where he could find all sorts of fresh ingredients, but he didn't exactly have a lot of cash at the moment. (It was kind of a miracle that his wallet had survived last night in one piece.)

The vibe here wasn't all that different from his usual spot, though. He didn't see anyone cheerily calling out for customers or greeting regulars, but… He saw people of all different shapes and sizes going about their lives, oblivious to the war bubbling just under the surface. Somewhere, lost in one of the aisles, a child cried; in his periphery, a pair of girls a few years younger than him laughed and nudged each other, their arms full of junk food. A young mother led a kid of no more than five or six around him as the boy looked up at him with wide eyes. Ignorant and blissful.

For a moment, he wished he was one of them.

The melancholy feeling passed quickly, though. It wouldn't do these people any good to bury his head in the sand. These were the ones who would suffer if the Grail's destructive power was unleashed. These were the people he was trying to protect, whether they knew it or not.

For now, protecting them meant staying on Tohsaka's good side; he needed an ally like her, and what _she_ needed was a good meal.

That said, he was also a little more stressed than he wanted to admit, and cooking had always been calming for him, even when things got hectic in the kitchen. He was grasping at straws, and he knew it, but it seemed like something that might help.

He started with produce. Greens and mushrooms would go well in a stir-fry? _Maybe it'll even be new to Tohsaka_, he thought with a smile. Who knows what a person who doesn't even have soy sauce might have actually eaten before? He couldn't take anything for granted.

He hoped she wasn't a picky eater, but there would always be rice, he supposed. No one disliked rice, no matter how narrow your tastes were.

As he went down the list, he kicked plans around in his head. He'd need a soup, obviously, so he should probably figure out what he was in the mood for. A little of this. A little of that.

Rice. Tofu. Eggs. Bread. Essentials. It was nice to lose himself in something so mundane. Checking the carton to make sure none of the eggs were broken. Finding veggies that weren't bruised or overly dirty. His basket was just starting to get heavy when the woman ran into him.

His food went spilling everywhere, because his first reflex was to make sure that the stranger didn't hit the floor. "Sorry! I-I guess I wasn't looking where I was going," he stammered, releasing her elbows and bending down to get all his lost food off the ground. How fast had he been going, to hit that hard? He must really have been lost in thought.

Bubblegum popped somewhere overhead, and the youthful voice that responded sounded amused. "Oh yeah, kid. You were in a whole other world, weren't you?"

He straightened stiffly and found himself face to face with…

He wasn't really sure _what_ he was face-to-face with, actually. A glittering tiara framed perfect, long pink hair, and most of the face was hidden behind wide, dark sunglasses. Her arms were crossed over her chest, accentuating the so-bright-it-almost-hurt white leather of her coat. She was also showing off a lot of leg.

A _lot_ of leg.

He looked away, his face burning, and the woman laughed. "Never seen a pretty girl before, huh?" In his periphery, she brushed a long strand of her hair back, and she tittered. "I suppose women around here _are_ pretty lame, huh?"

"N-no, I-"

Before he could get more than that out, her soft hands were on his arms, and she was steering him out of the center of the aisle. "Didn't anyone ever teach you to not to block the way? Honestly, you're not doing much to impress me." He wondered if he was sweating.

He was definitely sweating.

This was getting surreal in an entirely different way than the last day had been. "I-impress you?"

The woman pouted, and an unwelcome hand closed over Shirou's heart. "You meet the most gorgeous, most talented girl in the whole world, and you're not even interested in impressing her? What kind of a man are you?" She leaned closer, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "And don't tell me you're gay. I'm very good at sensing that kind of thing."

"Sorry, I-" He tried to pull away, but her grip had turned to iron. "I'm not interested in your, uh…" He swallowed. "Services?"

She inclined her head in disbelief, wide eyes judging him over the rim of the shades. "My servi- You don't have a lot of tact, do you? I've killed people for less that that."

Was she joking? She must be joking. _She doesn't sound like she's joking_. His eyes darted from one end of the aisle to the next, looking for help, but the other shoppers seemed to be avoiding them. He forced a laugh to defuse the tension, and even he could hear how false and probably patronizing it sounded. He tried to tug away again, but she wasn't letting him go. Her grip had turned to iron, her fingers digging deep into the flesh of his arm. If it wasn't for his shirt, he was pretty sure her nails would have broken the skin.

Her glare shifted into a sweet smile, and she leaned in close enough that her breath was warm on his cheek. "Would you like to try again?" she asked sweetly.

Shirou swallowed hard, wide-eyed as a deer in the headlights. "I-I'm not really in the market for…" Her face began to harden, and he backpedalled desperately. "A-a girlfriend! I'm not looking for a girlfriend!"

"Hmm," she hummed smugly. She leaned in closer. She smelled subtly floral and sweet, and her words tickled his ear as she whispered. "Then why is your heart beating so fast?" Delicate fingers caressed his cheek, but she still had one hand holding him tight.

Suddenly, he couldn't move. Even the parts of him that weren't in an iron grip. He was beginning to wonder if he should start yelling for help when an unexpected childish voice cut in. "Wow, guess now I know what kind of things Rider rides, huh?"

"Rider?" Shirou choked, at the same moment that the woman turned with a hiss. A few different emotions hit at the same time, but strangely, what came most to the forefront was relief. He was actually _happy_ to see the person who had sent a monster after them the night before. That really hit home how fucked he'd been a second before, and how fucked he probably still was.

"Back off, little girl. You're not old enough to see this part."

"How old do you think I am?" Illyasviel von Einzbern asked in a singsong voice, one crooked arm propped on her hip. She was dressed in an entirely different purple ensemble that the one Shirou had seen, and there was a long, thin scab on her chin. "Anyway, you're embarrassing yourself. Onii-chan is too dumb for your charms to work."

The woman - Rider - gave him a sideways glance, then let go. Her syrupy expression had gone completely sour. Shirou scrambled backward, rubbing at the quickly forming bruises on his arm. "I'm starting to get that impression."

"Soooo," Illya continued. "Whatever you're going to do isn't a very good plan." She tapped her chin thoughtfully with one small finger. "Guess you must be getting pretty old, huh? And you're still so desperate for a boyfriend that you'd do something like this? That's sad."

"Listen, little girl-"

"Ah," Illya chided, holding up her index finger. "Two things. First, my name is Illyasviel von Einzbern, not 'little girl'. Second, you're obviously under orders not to make a scene, or Onii-chan would just be dead." She spread her arms wide, her smile joyful. "Me and Berserker don't really care about that, though. So if you try anything now, you're gonna get hurt real bad."

Rider tightened her hands into fists. "I don't sense another Servant. He's not here, is he?"

Shirou was busy standing very, very still, in the hopes that if he didn't draw attention to himself, the two of them would forget he was there and leave him alone.

Illya sighed dramatically at Rider, her eyes closed, and an intricate webwork of red lines pulsed over every inch of exposed skin. She cracked one crimson eye and smiled as they faded. "Do you think the heir to the Einzberns would be so weak that she couldn't hide something like that? Presence concealment is only hard for babies." She suddenly pressed her hands to her mouth, as though mortified and apologetic, but there was nothing but snide smugness in her voice. "Oh, I'm sorry, I should be more careful with my words. You must be working with a whole lot less than that. How far have the Makiris fallen, again?"

Rider waved a dismissive hand. "I'm sure that would hurt if I gave two shits about my Master's honor. He's a slimeball."

"Hee, fair enough," Illya chirped, linking her hands behind her back. "Now get out of here. I'm the only one who's allowed to kill him."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm not here to fight," the pink-haired Servant said, putting up her hands in a bored gesture of placation. She took a few steps toward Illya, then stopped. "One thing, though."

Illya blinked up at her. "What is it? You've gotta know I'm not going to tell you anything."

"How do you think you'll beat the Assassin with the black armor? He's pretty strong, right?"

Illya's eyes widened almost imperceptibly in recognition. Rider grinned wide and clapped her on the shoulder. "Thanks, doll. I've got what I came for now." As she walked away, bouncing on her heels, she turned to face Shirou, and without looking where she was going blew him a kiss.

Then she was gone.

"Damn it," Illya said as Rider disappeared. "I didn't mean to do that."

"Language," Shirou said in a daze.

Illya gave him the kind of look one might give a particularly stupid cat who had just pulled a glass of water off a table onto itself.

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. His arm was beginning to ache, so he set the basket down. He followed it down a moment later, sitting on the floor with his back to a freezer.

Illya considered him for a few moments, then sat down next to him, hugging her knees to her chest. This close, he could also see the tip of a dark bruise peeking out over her collar. "Coming out alone was pretty stupid, Onii-chan."

Shirou let the back of his head _clunk_ gently against the cold glass. "Yeah, I'm starting to think that maybe I didn't think this whole thing through very well."

"Thinking isn't your strong suit, huh?" She giggled, and Shirou was struck by how _normal_ she seemed in that moment. Schoolyard teasing, without any malice behind it.

The desire for mundanity washed over him again, but he was still on edge; he'd been accosted by a Servant, and he hadn't even realized what was happening until he'd been rescued. Maybe he was having a hard time adjusting to this whole Grail War thing. "What are you doing here, Illya?" he asked softly.

She sighed, looking vaguely disappointed. "I wanted to meet you." There was a wistful look on her face that Shirou just didn't understand.

"We already met," he reminded her. "You tried to kill me."

The girl looked genuinely confused. "Of course I did," she said. "We're enemies. That's what we're supposed to do. How many times _did_ you hit your head, Onii-chan?"

Shirou blinked at her. "Then why are we talking right now? Why save me? If Rider was about to try to get me alone to do something to me, she'd just be taking down the competition, right?" It seemed like the kind of logic that people used in this war; besides, he was still shaken from Berserker's mad rush the night before.

Illya's shrug looked especially childish. "Like I told her, I'm the only one that gets to kill you." She looked down at the floor, tracing idle circles with her finger. "And… I wanted to understand."

"Understand what?"

"You…" She seemed unsure how to put whatever she was thinking into words. "Last night. You had Assassin with you that whole time, even though I thought he was gone. I couldn't sense him at all. While Archer was fighting Berserker, he was distracted, and he was doing a good job with that. You could have had Assassin kill me, and you didn't. It would have been easy." She looked up at him, and her eyes were wide and guileless. "Why didn't you?"

_Well, he can't show up without hurting me, and I didn't have a lot of time to think._ But no, those weren't the reasons Illya was still alive. Not really. The lights hummed high overhead, and people were returning to the aisle. Mostly, they ignored the two of them, but every now and then they'd get a dirty look; a pair of kids taking up space where they shouldn't be. Shirou smiled apologetically at one such passerby. "I don't want anyone to die," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to get involved in this, but I _am_ involved. I'm not running from that. But that doesn't mean I have to give up everything I believe in. I don't want to kill people. Especially not in such an… underhanded way."

Illya was frowning. "That's silly," she said simply.

Shirou laughed wryly. "I've been getting that a lot lately." _You and Tohsaka and Archer. Even Assassin's thinking it._

Where the hell _was_ Assassin?

She scratched at a bit of dirt on the floor as she spoke. She seemed fascinated by it. "You'll never win if you won't get your hands dirty. If you won't, someone else always will." She glanced back at him, and she smiled. There was no animosity in it, and it was almost like they were discussing fun, meaningless things, rather than why they hadn't murdered each other in cold blood. "I think I get it now. You're just an idiot."

That hurt a lot more than it should have. "Hey, no," he protested, shaking his head. "Listen. I just…" He fumbled for the words. "Other people are important."

She gave him a blank look.

"Everybody is a person," he said, with a little more conviction.

Illya blinked slowly, not comprehending. "Yeah, so? Sometimes you've gotta kill to do what needs doing."

How did you explain to someone that they should care about other people? That the people you passed in the street had their own lives? Their own struggles and joys and sorrows that were unique? _You're just as much a human being as anyone else in the world, _he thought, but that didn't feel right to say. Somehow, he didn't think that would mean much to Illya. "Never mind. Maybe it is stupid." He blew out a tired sigh. "Maybe none of it matters."

"Everyone dies eventually," Illya said. "Why does it matter when they go?"

"Because it's all the stuff in the middle that matters, and we shouldn't be cutting that short!" Frustration bubbled in his chest; it was all so clear to him, but when it came to putting it into words, he always came up short. "If someone dies young, and they never had a chance to smile… isn't that sad? Doesn't everyone deserve a chance to have their own life?"

Illya looked completely lost. "You're weird, Onii-chan."

Shirou rubbed his eyes. The exhaustion was setting back in, but he had a long way to go before he could sleep. An idea occurred to him. "Do you care about Berserker?"

"Berserker's my best friend!" she chirped proudly.

That was a little weird, but he wasn't one to judge. He closed his eyes, enjoying the cool on his back. _Maybe I'm overdoing it._ "Everyone in the world is someone's Berserker, Illya," he said quietly, then took a stab in the dark. "Wouldn't he be sad if you died?"

For a while, there was only the chatter of indistinct voices and the rattle of shopping carts. They sat there like that for a while; he didn't open his eyes, and she didn't speak, but he could feel her presence beside him the whole time.

It was… nice. It was a pleasant silence, while it lasted.

In the end, there was a rustling noise, and he opened his eyes. Illya was back on her feet, and she was brushing dust off of herself. There was a pensive, faraway look in her eyes. "It's getting late. I need to go home. Berserker's waiting, and he's probably worried sick."

Shirou tried to imagine the great beast pacing and fretting, and his mind simply refused to conjure the picture. "You were bluffing?"

She nodded, and gave him a sad smile. "He doesn't like busy places, and it's hard for him to dematerialize. I hope he's not too lonely, all by himself."

"You live alone?" The moment he said it, it felt obvious, like saying the sky was blue, or that gravity was a thing that existed.

Illya shrugged, tapping the tip of her shoe on the ground. "Yeah."

There was something upsetting about that notion. "Don't you get lonely?"

She laughed, and gave a little twirl. "Not at all! I can do whatever I want, and there's nobody to stop me." If she was hiding angst about it, she was doing an amazing job. She bent over, putting her face level with his. "I had a nice time, Onii-chan, so here."

Two tiny, warm hands rested on his cheeks, and she closed her eyes. Before Shirou could do much more than blink in surprise, a pleasantly cool feeling coursed through him. The closest analogy he could come up with was the way cold water felt in your throat after a long day of work in the summer sun, but… everywhere. She whispered a word he didn't know, and all at once, the pain receded a little.

She stepped back, then opened her eyes once more. She was smiling softly.

"What was that?" Shirou asked, raising a hand to touch his cheek. The bruises still hurt, but they weren't nearly as tender. He could see out of his swollen eye again, too.

She shrugged, looking away, as if embarrassed. "You just looked so sad and pathetic, I felt like I had to do something. It's just a little healing spell that my…. that someone taught me a long time ago." There _was_ a touch of red in her cheeks that Shirou didn't think had been there before.

He beamed at her, and this smile hurt a little less than all the ones that came before it today had. "Thank you, Illya."

She blushed more furiously, her brows knitting together in frustration or anger. In the end, though, what she said was, "I should go. Thanks for talking. I think I might be sad when you die."

He blinked, taken aback by the innocent brutality in that statement."How are you getting home?" he asked instead.

She seemed as confused by the sudden change in topic as he did. "I'm gonna walk?"

"Hold on," he said, then dug into his pocket for his wallet. He flipped through it, thinking, and in the end pressed a few bills into her dainty little hands. "Here. Get a cab, okay? Do you know how to do that?" Hopefully it was enough; he didn't know how far she had to go.

Illya nodded slowly, looking at the money as though she wasn't sure if it wasn't secretly cursed. "You're weird, onii-chan," she said again, but she kept the money as she walked off.

She was almost out of sight when he leapt to his feet and ran to her. "Illya!"

"Huh?" She turned back to him, confused.

"I don't like the thought of you all alone at a time like this." He grabbed one of her hands in both of his, and his mouth was moving faster than his brain. "Come back with me. I'm making a big dinner tonight, and I can make enough for you, too."

Her face was unreadable, her body still as a statue. Was she annoyed? Angry? Sad? He couldn't tell. Finally, she slowly pulled her hand away, a sad smile on her lips. "Goodbye, Onii-chan. I'll see you soon."

Then she was gone, too, and Shirou was alone again, a dull ache that he couldn't identify throbbing in his chest.

* * *

_Churches are supposed to be welcoming, aren't they? _

It _was_ beautiful; an intricate structure of stone and wood and glass, reaching aspirationally for the heavens. Carvings dotted the exterior, and even the great iron gate, open before her for visitors, was gorgeously wrought. No, there could be nothing sinister about such a place, and that meant that the cold, slippery aura of distrust she felt pouring off of the holy place was because of her. Because of the kind of person she was. It wasn't that the church wasn't welcoming; it was that _she_ wasn't welcome.

There was comfort in understanding her own nature so well.

Stepping through the gates, she shivered, goosebumps tickling the back of her neck. She was being watched. Not just by one pair of eyes, either. A thousand eyes watching and weighing and judging. She already knew what their judgement would be, so why didn't they just hurry up and get it over with? Just smite her and be done. A petulant, whiny thought. Not worth any more than all the other times she'd idly wished for oblivion. Still, nothing reached down from on high to stop her from pushing the heavy wooden doors open and entering.

The main room (hall? She'd never been in a church before) was empty and solemn. Rows of old, polished wooden benches lined a central aisle of luxurious red carpet, framing a stone altar at the rear. That's where the Father would give his sermons, she imagined, preaching the word of God to whatever patchwork Christian congregation he'd scraped together here in Fuyuki. She'd never met him before; all she knew was that he was some kind of… overseer for the War. Grandfather didn't like him very much, from the way he talked about him, but Grandfather didn't like many people, so that didn't help much. The priest was the one who was supposed to keep it all aboveboard, and out of sight of regular people.

Normal people. The kind of person she wished she was, but not the kind of person she deserved to be. Churches were meant to be houses of healing, but even with magic, some injuries were terminal. Stains didn't always come out in the wash. There was no redemption for her here.

If the good Father wasn't here, though, that left her unsure what to do. Going to Rider had been a mistake, that was clear now; if Senpai _was_ a Master, she'd only be looking for ways to hurt him. Sakura could threaten Nii-san (in extraordinary circumstances like these, perhaps, but still), but not her. If Sakura wanted to help Senpai, she had to do so herself, though the fear might swallow her up and leave her an empty husk. The Father might know where Senpai is, and she might be able to find him herself. To warn him, or to help him, or… she didn't know what. It was hard to imagine what she'd do when she found him. She just knew that she _had_ to.

With a gentle sigh, she sat down on one of the pews, folded her hands over her lap, and resolved to wait. Seconds ticked by, becoming minutes, until-

_Her dreams are never gentle. Her sleep is never peaceful. Her rest is never restful. _

_She stands in the dark._

_The dark presses against her and suffocates her and becomes her._

_A flash of blinding light. She cannot see._

_She cannot see, but she is covered in blood._

_She knows this because she can smell that distinctive metallic sting, and she can feel a thick blanket of it drenching her from head to toe where she stands._

_She cannot move._

_She shouldn't move._

_She cannot move._

_She will not move._

_She cannot move._

_Another __**flash**_ _of light, and this one doesn't blind her, but in that moment she sees writhing horrors in the dark, grasping arms and bloody hands reaching for her, and she is in darkness again but the world flashes again and the shadows are closer they are coming for her and she tries to scream but all she can manage is a pained whistle before-_

_**flash**_

_and there is blood in her mouth that is not hers and her hands are around his neck. He chokes and scratches, but she is too strong. No one is as strong as her._

_She's had this dream before._

_She isn't sure what's worse when she has this dream; the confusion on his face, or how she feels absolutely nothing until she awakens. The guilt always comes, but in those first few moments, when it still feels so real, there is void._

_**flash**_

_She is wreathed in black flame, and the boiling void pours from her heart._

_**flashflash**_

_Once more she cannot move because she is bound. Upside down, suspended by her ankles, naked, wrapped in chains upon chains upon roaring flame and blackening skin. The iron bites deep into her skin. Exquisite pain that should mark the end of everything she is, but it does not upset her; it feels right. It feels like the end she deserves. It feels like-_

_A hand, firm and cold, cuts through the flame, dragging her away from her deserving end, back to the mortal world of real pain and sorrow and loss and she _

screamed and leapt to her feet, adrenaline flooding her body like cruel acid.

"Are you alright, child?" A deep voice said calmly from behind her, as the hand withdrew from her shoulder, and she forcibly reminded herself that there was _not_ laughter bubbling in that voice, that she was only being cruel and paranoid and imagining the worst in someone she didn't even know. Fighting to get her gasps under control, she turned, slowly. The man who stood there must have been the priest himself; who else would dress in robes like that?

She gave him a deep bow, shame rising like bile in her throat. "Y-yes, Father. I'm sorry, I only meant to wait for you to arrive. I didn't mean to… fall asleep..."

The tall priest blinked slowly, then smiled warmly. "Interesting."

"I-interesting…?" Her voice still shook. _Stupid._

"I am merely unaccustomed to being shown respect by one such as you, Sakura Matou." His voice was slow and smooth, but it was unmistakable— there _was_ a kind of laughter in the words. "My name is Father Kotomine. What brings you to me?"

_How does he know who I am? _Was he watching her? New paranoia mingled with the bitter taste of shame and she wanted to vomit. _You're being stupid, Sakura. You __**are**_ _a Master, whether you like it or not, or you were. It's his job to know you._ "What do you mean… one such as me?" Her nerves buzzed, as her stomach roiled and burned.

His eyes were so cold, two points of black ice set into an expression of comfort and understanding. "A sinner, of course." It wasn't an accusation, but the words were like cruel fishhooks tearing through her skin, a fishing line wrapping around her throat tight enough to draw blood.. _He can see me. He knows, he knows, he knows, he-_

Hands pressed to her chest, her fingernails dug deeply into her palm. Pain buzzed welcomingly, clearing her head enough to speak. "I… I need your help, Father."

With a magnanimous spread of his hands, he inclined his head for her to continue. "If it is within my power as supervisor. All are welcome within my flock, no matter how fallen, you see."

The fishhooks lodged within her each yanked a different direction, the garrote tightened, but she would not be torn apart. Not yet. She could fall apart _later. _"Shirou Emiya," she whispered, and saying the name aloud felt like blasphemy. "I need to find him. I..." Steel entered her voice. "I think he's in danger."

The smile didn't leave the priest's face as he crossed his arms. "What you ask of me is no small favor, Sakura Matou. I am sworn not to involve myself in the affairs of the Holy Grail War, after all." He was laughing at her. He wasn't laughing but he was _laughing at her_.

Something hot and wet ran down her wrist. Her knuckles ached. "I'd give anything. Please. Is he safe?"

The Father seemed to consider this for a long moment, and the tension built and built and built until she was sure she'd die before he spoke. "I cannot tell you where Shirou Emiya is, but I will tell you where I was when you came to my door." He lifted one hand, palm up. There was fine dust on his skin. "Part of my duties involve making sure that no trace is left that might draw innocent people into the conflict. Last night, there was a battle that left…" He was still _smiling._ "..._Quite_ a trace. I am not a powerful magus, but it took nearly all the spare magical energy I had to clean up the rubble. It's truly a miracle more people were not hurt."

Sakura gasped. "Are you saying… Senpai was part of that battle?"

Father Kotomine tilted his head gravely. "I will not engage in speculation, Sakura Matou."

Her hands were shaking again. She was so _weak_. She would have to conclude that she was _too_ weak to protect Senpai if she couldn't even handle this conversation. "Then why tell me that at all?" she asked quietly.

"Because I will share one more piece of information with you." He did not continue. She felt like a starving dog having a piece of raw meat dangled just out of her reach, and hopelessness like desperate hunger chewed her gut until she was sure she must be nothing but bloody, undifferentiated meat on the inside.

Bloody meat and the thing that fed there and her vision wavered and static filled her head and she would _not give in to weakness right now_.

"Tell me," she said, and her voice was as small as she felt.

"My sources did catch a glimpse of young Shirou Emiya last night, in the company of another Master." His expression was sad, but Sakura was beginning to realize that the priest's face was _not_ his face, but a mask. A mold of skin stretched over something… inhuman.

_Something like me._

"Was he…" She swallowed. "Was he okay?"

"My information is old, Sakura Matou, and I will not speculate. However, in the early hours of this morning, Shirou Emiya was, and you understand that I cannot be specific, of course, being moved without consent to a location that was not his home, by a Master that… Well. I cannot name names, but it was a Master that you share a special bond with."

There were only two other Masters she knew of, and she'd already ruled Shinji out. Her blood ran cold, and her vision became a tunnel. Rage pulsed at the edges of her vision. If it wasn't Shinji, then it must be… She was almost out the door before she even realized that her legs were moving.

"Sakura Matou," the Father said, raising one large hand. She paused, one foot out the door. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, as if saying the words were causing him intense pain. _You're enjoying this. You're enjoying stringing me along, _she thought, but she had no spare emotional room for anger. "You may also be interested to know that Shirou Emiya was unconscious and covered in his own blood as _she_ carried him away."

Sakura Matou already knew she was a bad person, but in that moment, she was not flesh and bone but murderous intent made manifest in human skin, and that scared her more than anything else she could imagine.

* * *

_Next Chapter: Homecoming_

_I love it when you all share and review and all that jazz. It makes my day! Thanks for reading!_


	10. Homecoming

_Good afternoon, my wonderful readers! Welcome back to posting on my normal day._

* * *

The smell of good coffee filled the house, which was weird, because she didn't remember making coffee. She followed the smell to the coffee pot, and found that it was indeed full and ready to serve. She blinked at it. It was hard for her to wake up without it, and someone had thoughtfully gotten one started for whenever she came down. Archer must have really found something truly kind and compassionate within him if-

Oh. No. Shirou probably started the coffee pot, huh? Her face soured. She'd have to be _grateful_ to that idiot now, wouldn't she? A ridiculous notion. (There was something incredibly irritating about the fact that she actually _was_ grateful.)

A few minutes later, she was cradling a steaming mug as contentedly as she ever had, sitting with perfect posture in a polished wooden chair at her dining table. The place was still a mess, but it was peaceful in a way that she'd badly needed. No one screaming, no one begging for help, no battles to be fought or moral dilemmas to grapple with. Just her, her coffee, and enough sugar to kill an elephant. Wherever Shirou had passed back out, she hoped he'd be unconscious for a good long while.

In front of her, she'd set up something of a workstation; notebooks and pencils arrayed in a chaotic spread in front of her, along with a textbook of magical theory she'd dug out of her (extensive) library, several volumes of collected essays, and basically any book she could think of that might have useful information or ideas on the kind of summoning sickness Shirou seemed to be dealing with. An old pair of reading glasses was perched on her nose; she didn't know how long she'd be working on this, and she didn't want to add eye strain to her list of ailments.

Shirou was a problem. Well, that was true in a lot of ways, but for now, his magical capacity was what needed solving. If they were allies, he needed to start pulling his own weight. Literally. She didn't relish the idea of having to drag him home in a busted up heap again; her muscles still ached and burned every time she moved. Solving this problem would come back to bite her in the ass when the time came to end their partnership and be enemies again, but all things considered, she'd rather survive long enough for that to be an issue.

On a blank sheet, she started scribbling down facts. Shirou was a Master without a Crest. (She was still wrapping her head around that one; the idiot's idiot father must have loved him too much.) He could do strengthening magic, and that was pretty much it, and that only with intense focus and effort. (She wrote the words "_magic switch?" _with an arrow pointing to this item.) Shirou's servant was an order of magnitude more powerful than he could handle. (How he'd managed to _accidentally_ get ahold of such a familiar was also a mystery, but one that was slightly less pressing.)

She slid the textbook closer and opened it with a clunk. It had been written sometime in the late 1700s or so, and the typeset was dense and unforgiving, but it was also one of the best sources of information on energy flow that she'd come across in her studies. She paged through it, taking notes on a second sheet of paper, piecing things together from disparate sources. There wasn't exactly a chapter called "Help! My Servant Needs More Mana Than I Can Give!" that she could get all her answers from, nor was there a Holy Grail War For Dummies that she could run down to the library and grab.

Her initial takeaway was confirmation that prolonged exposure to the kind of drain Assassin was causing would absolutely kill Shirou. It would not be a pretty death, either. Chapter 15 detailed the physical effects of having one's life force siphoned without a buffer, though the information was presented more in the context of a botched spell or malicious curse; it would eat away at his muscle mass, begin to solidify the blood in his veins, and render his bones brittle and crumbly. If a heart attack or a stroke or grievous bodily injury to his weakened flesh didn't kill him, he would certainly die when the chemical bonds in his very molecules began to dissolve.

Right. Frankly, she should have just taken the death thing on faith and not gotten those horrible images in her head. Shirou was a fucking idiot, but she didn't want him to fall apart like that. That was too cruel, and she was already having enough nightmares.

She added the words _Question 1: can we supplement with external energy?, _then underlined it. If the answer to that one was yes, that would solve a lot of problems all by itself. _Question 2: are Assassin's energetic needs different from an average Servant's? _Essentially, would a normal Magus be able to handle Assassin, who seemed a contradiction in so many ways, or would they find themselves in the same predicament? Then, below that, _Question 3: would he trust me with Assassin if we can't find a solution?_

She looked at that last one for longer than she'd like to admit before she grimaced and scribbled it out.

_Question 3: Can Shirou's capacity be artificially increased?_ This was what she intended to focus most on. External energy could be used to help, but it would be difficult to make work on its own. She had a few ideas, but she'd need to get a closer look at his body and his magic circuits to figure that one out. This study session was more about refreshing her baseline knowledge and brainstorming than it was solving the problem all at once.

There were a couple things that looked promising. If her hunch was right and Shirou's switch was either broken or missing, then installing one would absolutely increase the energy flow. Right now, it would be like Assassin was forcing water through a half-closed valve, and the pressure needed to do that was introducing a whole lot of waste. Water spraying everywhere but where it needed to go - or in this case, mana Assassin needed spilling uselessly into the ether. It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would go a long way to lessening it. That was a good place to start.

Lists built on lists built on lists. There would need to be a decent infusion of external energy, plus some kind of internal catalyst… The sound of graphite _scritch_ing on paper was almost soothing. This was all theoretical, not preventing an actual human being from literally dissolving, so as long as she kept her mind from-

Ah, fuck, now she was thinking about it again. With a grimace, she reached for her mug, only to find it empty. Inconvenient, but getting another cup would keep her busy for a minute. She pushed away from the table, then paused, a sinking feeling lodging itself in her chest. _He's been quiet a long time._ Sure, he was probably just still asleep, but after the night she'd just had…

"Shirou?" she called. Sound didn't carry very well here; there was too much to muffle it, so it wasn't surprising when she didn't get a response. Slowly, methodically, but with a rising panic and anger, she checked every room in her home.

Shirou was not here.

Okay. _Let's not freak out just yet. _Her bounded field was still intact, and none of her alarms had gone off, so there hadn't been an intruder or an attack. No sign of a struggle, anyway, and she didn't think Assassin would have let Shirou be carried off without a fight. So not an enemy.

Or… No. Shirou was trusting and idealistic to a fault. Someone he knew would be able to coax him out of a safe place, easily, by relying on that. A phone call is all it would take, and that wouldn't have triggered her defenses. "Damn it, Emiya," she growled, then descended the stairs to the basement with as much grace as a herd of elephants. "Archer!" she yelled as she reached the bottom and turned the corner.

Archer was sitting cross legged in the circle where she'd left him, looking up at her placidly. "How'd you sleep?"

"Emiya's gone," she said instead. "We've gotta go find him."

Archer… didn't look surprised. "Do we?"

"Yes, we-" She paused. "Wait a minute. Did you know?" A vein ticked in her forehead. "Tell me you didn't know."

Archer shrugged, smirking. "I didn't know for sure, but I stopped sensing Assassin up there about two hours ago."

"And you didn't tell me?" she hissed.

Archer blinked up at her innocently, and she wanted to deck him. "I'm in timeout, Rin. I don't know what you want from me."

A strangled sound of frustration and anger escaped her, and she broke the circle, grabbing him by the front of his red coat, hauling him up, and shaking him a little. "I want you to do your damn job without undermining me! What happened to following my orders?"

Archer looked supremely unimpressed. "You didn't give me any orders about making sure that idiot didn't leave the house." She looked him dead in the eye, and he looked right back. He was right, and that was what pissed her off the most.

"We have to go find him," she growled through clenched teeth. They were _allies_. She'd given her _word_. If he didn't understand the situation he was in, then she should have known that and taken that into consideration. If he died out there-

Her Servant sighed, making a big show of brushing some non-existent dust off his jacket. "Guess it can't be helped. You know I still can't fight, right?" He lifted his shirt to show her the gash; it was closed, and there was a ring of scar tissue around the edges, but it looked like it was ready to break open at the first opportunity.

"Your eyes didn't get cut out, did they?" She gave him a pointed glare. "Help me find him, and that one _is_ an order."

"I suppose you've given me no choice," he said with a wry bow. "Let's go find your pet moron."

Moments later, she threw open her front door, ready to sprint out and begin her search - and instead froze. "Wh-" Her muscles had locked up in a way that was not in any way magical.

For a moment, her brain short circuited. She couldn't be seeing what she was seeing, and so her vision refused to resolve into a coherent image.

Of all the people in Fuyuki City that she was least prepared to see, Sakura Matou was at the very top of the list. She stood just outside the gate, just outside Rin's bounded field. Her violet eyes were wide as dinner plates, her hair was more unkempt than Rin had ever seen it, and one fist was pressed defensively to her chest as if she were trying to keep something away… or keep something in. Her mouth was slightly open as she stared. She looked just as shocked as Rin did as the color drained from her face.

A few long moments passed. Rin stared at Sakura. Sakura stared at Rin.

A shadow passed over Sakura's face, her expression slackening. Her head sagged, her gaze sinking down to her feet. She was hidden under a curtain of hair, and all Rin could see was one shaking hand.

Rin forced herself to regain composure, and tilted her head back. Subtle confidence and lack of surprise. "What are you doing here, Sakura?" She didn't speak with hostility, but her words were cool. "You know you aren't supposed to come back h-"

Sakura's trembling head jerked in a way that was almost unnatural, and she looked back up. Written across her face was anger deeper than Rin had ever seen her wear — an anger that Rin hadn't even known the girl was capable of. Her eyes were dry, but rimmed in red, and her lips were chapped and cracked. Her whole body was shaking. Her voice was barely enough to carry. "Where is he?"

Rin took an unconscious step back.

That was a mistake.

Set into motion the way a bull is enraged by a matador's cape, Sakura had crossed the distance to grab fistfuls of Rin's jacket, yanking her close. There was a cornered-animal look in her eye. _She's not just angry. She's __**afraid.**_ "What did you do to him?"

Rin's thoughts moved very quickly. There was no time to feel fear. Sakura was unhinged. That was clear. Something had happened. _He. _There were two people Rin could imagine that meant — Shinji and Shirou. She hadn't seen Shinji since the other day, so that meant Sakura probably meant Shirou.

Sakura had seen the scene at Shirou's house. The damage.

And she thought Rin had done it.

That she'd hurt Sakura's only real friend.

That realization hit like a hammer blow, but she kept her face carefully neutral. "Shirou?" she said, as calmly as if she were discussing today's forecast. "I haven't done anything to him."

Relief passed over Sakura's face, but she seemed to actively reject it. The brief slackness morphed into fear, then twisted back into anger. Her shaking grew worse. "I don't believe you," she whispered hoarsely. "What did you do to him?" She repeated.

Rin gently put her hands on Sakura's hands and tried to pull them away. Sakura's grip broke like her fingers were made of sand. She didn't follow when Rin stepped back. "I don't know what you think-"

The anger softened into a sadness so deep that Rin ached with it. "You can't lie to me, nee-san." (The once familiar word like broken glass in Rin's ears.) A pained smile and red eyes. "Even after all this time. I know how the world works. It just wants to take. And take and take and…" She stopped with a ragged breath. The smile was gone. "You're part of the world too. I don't want to fight, nee-san. Please show me he's okay. I need… I need him to be okay."

"Sakura…" Rin was at a loss for words. Rin was _never _at a loss for words. "He's okay. I can't bring you to him right now, but-"

"I know what you are," Sakura whispered. "We're the same, nee-san. You and me and Senpai."

Rin froze. Time seemed to stop.

Sakura took a step closer, and Rin reacted. With a reflexive shove, her hand spread wide, magic pulsed through the still air. Invisible bonds swirled and coalesced around Sakura's body, yanking the younger girl back and up into the air. Her arms locked at her side, she bucked and twisted in ways that looked painful. The restraints would not give; Sakura would break herself before she freed herself.

Now Rin's outstretched hand was the one that shook, but her voice was calm. "What do you mean, 'we're the same?'" She knew. Of course she did. She should have known right from the beginning, but she had never even thought to suspect _her_. There could only be one Tohsaka Master, but of course, Sakura was most emphatically _not_ a Tohsaka. Not for a long time.

Looks like Rin had been an idiot, too.

Sakura screamed something primal and wordless, and there was another pulse of magic. This one was…her mind struggled to assign it adjectives. Slimy. Rotten. Shimmering and otherworldly, like gasoline on water. The unnatural magic cut like a hot knife through her bonds, and she dropped to the ground, landing heavily on her feet. It would have been a simple spell, but Sakura's breath came in gasps. That must be the Matou family magic; it wasn't compatible with her, but it was all she had.

With a chill, Rin realized that all the grass in a three foot radius around Sakura was withered and dead.

Rin slowly raised a hand, and power gathered again. "Sakura. I need you to tell me what you mean." She didn't want this. She so desperately didn't want this. But if Sakura was involved, if she was an enemy…

She'd always told herself she'd make any sacrifice for this when the time came.

Instead of responding, instead of fighting back, Sakura collapsed to her knees like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her hair hid her face once again. When she spoke, her voice was as empty as her eyes had been. "I can't beat you in a fight. I know that."

Now Rin's voice did shake. "Then why did you come?" The power gathered at the tip of her fingers, ready to be released with lethal force. "Why did you attack me?" A worthless plea, but one she couldn't keep off her lips.

"I'm afraid, nee-san," Sakura said, still motionless. "But if you can… if you can tell me he's okay. If you can show me he's okay." Her voice broke, and her shoulders bucked. "Then you can do whatever you want to me. It's what I deserve." Her face rose, peeking through the veil of hair. Rin had never seen eyes so utterly devoid of anything resembling life. "But if you can't…. i-if you can't…" There was no emotion in the words, and that was the most frightening thing of all.

Rin's hand glowed with the power that boiled and churned and fought to be unleashed. "Sakura. Listen to me. Shirou is okay. He's… he's not here right now, but I promise he is alive."

"Then where is he?" she whispered. "Why won't you show him to me?"

"Because I don't know where he is!" Rin snapped, and Sakura flinched. Rin forced herself not to care. To ignore the molten confusion churning inside her. She had to be iron. She had to be stronger than iron. "He ran off! I was leaving the house to find him!" _Where the hell is Archer?_

"How am I supposed to trust you?" Sakura still hadn't tried to rise. Rin wasn't sure she was physically capable at the moment. "He could already be d-dead. You're a Master, too. You want to kill him. You want to kill me. We're… we're enemies. You're his enemy, too."

Rin grabbed her wrist with her other hand, trying to steady her aim. "We are enemies. But that also means you and Emiya are enemies, too," she said coldly enough to freeze molten steel. "If you want to help him, shouldn't you get out of his way and die?" She wanted to take the words back the instant she said them, but that wasn't how life worked. She'd said them. She would stand by them.

Sakura simply knelt there, knuckles on the grass, head bowed. She didn't speak again.

Rin stood there, Gandr shot aimed and ready to fire, and prepared to execute her sister. This was the Holy Grail War.

No matter what the cost was in the end. This was what she was born to do.

This was the cost of her life's aspiration.

A gentle breeze pulled at her coat, swirling red fabric around her like a cloud of blood in the water. Long purple strands of hair fluttered distantly in the air. Her magic sparked and hissed.

One word. That's all she needed to say.

One word and it would be over.

One word, and the last living family she possessed would be dead, and she would be one step closer to having everything she'd worked so hard to attain.

_Say it. _

_**Say it.**_

"Oh, hey, Sakura!" the worst possible voice said brightly, and Rin didn't want to admit to herself how close she came to blowing Shirou's head off in sheer panicked reflex. "What're you doing here?"

* * *

The sound of her name cut through the bloody haze that had overtaken her mind like a bucket of ice water. Her first response was disorientation. The last few minutes were blurry, out of focus. She remembered where she was and why she'd come, but once she and Rin had locked eyes, it was like she hadn't been driving her own body anymore. Her blood thudded painfully in her ears, and she wanted to retch.

"What're you doing here?"

Her breath stopped in her chest. All feeling, all emotion, seemed to have abandoned her, leaving her with nothing but cold sensation. Her head turned slowly, painfully, a rusted hinge squealing with disuse.

Senpai stood just inside the gate, his arms full with brown paper grocery bags stuffed with food. She didn't understand. He was badly bruised. One eye was slightly swollen, and there were scabby scrapes covering one cheek. The thing she'd feared so badly since the day before was true; a Command Seal was carved into the back of his hand, and he wasn't even trying to hide it. His clothes were filthy, torn, inside-out, covered in dirt and what looked like dried blood. And yet…

And yet, he was smiling. No, not smiling. He was _beaming. _He looked…

He looked like himself.

Then his smile faltered. His brows knit together. His eyes went from her to Rin and back again.

So that was it. He knew that she was bad. It was all over his face. The _judgement._ She'd ripped the life from living things to free herself from Rin's spell, because that's what the Matous did, and it was obvious. The hurt in his eyes would come soon, she knew, and that was everything she had ever wanted to avoid.

Her vision wavered, and she desperately squeezed her eyes closed to hold back the rush of tears as everything came flooding in and it was too _much_. Shame and loathing and regret and it was _too much. _She heard the sound of rustling paper, then footsteps approached, and she cringed away from them, because he would stand with Rin, they would be united against her, and this was _wrong_ and she shouldn't have done _anything _and she was _stupid stupid stupid-_

Warm, callused hands closed on hers, pulling them gently away from the ugly furrows she hadn't even realized she was trying to dig into her scalp. "Sakura…?" Tender and concerned. Warm.

His presence was solid. Real. Even without looking at him, he was bedrock.

"Shirou, where the fuck have you-" Rin started to protest angrily, but something made her pause. Maybe he'd given her a look. Maybe he'd shaken his head. Maybe she'd just understood something.

Senpai hadn't gone to Rin.

He'd come to her.

She didn't deserve that.

Her fingers closed around his hands, and she squeezed. He didn't speak. He just held her hands while she shook.

She didn't deserve a friend like him, but she was a selfish girl, and she wasn't strong enough to push him away.

* * *

Her front door was very heavy, and Illya was very small. The shadows had grown long, creeping fingers reaching for her, as the forest whispered familiarly at her back. It was peaceful, after twelve hours that had been anything but. She pushed and strained, and the heavy wood-and-metal door creaked reluctantly. When enough of a gap had been created, she slipped inside, letting it naturally drift closed behind her with a rumbling _clunk_.

This morning had been a disaster. It wasn't that the aftermath of the fight with Archer had hurt particularly badly that had been so upsetting. Pain was an old friend, and it had been since her growth had been stunted by the innumerable Command Seals that covered every inch of her like rusted iron chains. This morning had been a _different_ pain, though, and there was something existentially terrifying about that. When was the last time she'd been hurt by _someone else_? Berserker had carried her home, and she'd locked herself in her bedroom to cry.

As the morning had worn on, though, what had most lingered was the confusion. Shirou Emiya could have killed her. She'd made assumptions and left herself exposed. And yet…

And yet, he hadn't. He'd run. He'd run until he was badly hurt, and in all that time, never gave his Servant the command to come for her. She didn't understand. She _couldn't _understand.

She needed to understand.

So she'd sought him out, dispersing familiars throughout the city, hoping that one would catch a glimpse of him. It was a hope against hope. He was hurt, and he'd be in hiding. Of course he wouldn't be out on the town. And yet… he had been. The looks he'd given her were incomprehensible. The words were strange and foreign. She hated him so much she burned with it, but she found herself wanting to _like_ him.

Him. The person who had taken everything from her. The stranger her father had decided was more worthy of his love than her. She could never like such a person.

And yet.

And yet, he'd offered her a home cooked meal, even after she'd tried so hard to kill him. It was stupid. He was stupid. The whole idea was stupid. What would she want with such a thing? She could eat whatever she wanted to.

And after they'd spoken, Illya felt something that she couldn't wrap her mind around, not even to herself. It lasted as she dazedly stepped into a cab, and it lasted as she crossed the bounded field that marked her family's property, and still it remained.

She looked out over the familiar entrance hall. Polished and clean and orderly. Rich reds and golds and browns. A grand, ostentatious stairway that positioned its owners as above those who came in the front door. Gleaming tile and regal paintings. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. This was what she wanted. She didn't need other people. She had her maids, and she had Berserker, and she had herself. Even if anyone else was worthy to call themselves her friend, she didn't want such things. She was an Einzbern. She was heir to the most powerful, most important family in the whole world. She had everything she could ever want.

"I'm home," she called, and her only answer was the hollow echo of her own voice.

* * *

_I say this every chapter, but thank you again to everyone who leaves comments on my chapters! Y'all are the real heroes here._

_Next chapter: Kill or Be Killed_


	11. Kill or Be Killed

_Despite being sick, I emerge from my slumber to bring you a chapter!_

* * *

"You don't _get _to have an opinion on this, Emiya," Rin snarled, jamming her pointer finger so deeply into his ribs that something must have cracked. "Not after what you pulled."

Shirou slapped her hand away. "I don't get to have an opinion on whether or not we kill an innocent girl?" he hissed. "Even if it wasn't Sakura we're talking about, that's not happening."

Rin barked out a derisive laugh. "You still don't know what _war_ is, do you? She is a _Master._ She's not some poor innocent bystander, Shirou, no matter how much you want her to be." She jabbed him again. "For all we know, her Servant is on its way here right now to kill us both."

"She wouldn't do that," he said with absolute conviction. "This is _Sakura_ we're talking about. Sakura! Can you even hear yourself?"

With a growl of frustration, Rin whipped around and stomped a few paces away, crossing her arms over her chest. They were closed off in some kind of sitting room, the door locked with a heavy deadbolt. It was as fancy and well-furnished as every other room in the house had been; a distant-looking man with a goatee, a wine-red suit, and a condescending smile smouldered down at them from an oversized oil painting on one wall.

Sakura was locked in the library, and for all that Shirou had railed against leaving her there alone, he was thankful at least they weren't discussing whether or not she would be executed in cold blood where she could _hear_. Despite Rin's protests, he'd provided her with a heavy blanket and the biggest mug he could find, filled to the brim with steaming tea, so that hopefully she wouldn't feel too much like a prisoner.

"_Come on," he'd said gently. "It's cold out here, right? Let's get you inside."_

_She looked up at him for the first time since he'd taken her hands, and her eyes… He'd never seen them so blank. But that wasn't true, was it? This was how she'd looked when she'd started coming to see him. So expressionless that there might well not be a soul in her body. "Why?"_

_He got the feeling that she wasn't asking why it mattered that it was cold, but he shook his head and answered that question anyway. "Because you're not wearing a coat, dummy. You'll catch something." The real question she was asking, why he was helping her…_

_Well. That was just a silly thing to ask._

_Just out of his line of sight, the door slammed hard enough to shake the whole mansion, and Rin was gone. Sakura flinched like he'd taken a swing at her, so he forced himself to remain steady. That was something he'd learned, back then. When she was upset or withdrawn, she'd reacted well to slow and considered movement. _

_But he couldn't remember her eyes ever being so bloodshot. _

_He gave her hands a gentle pull, and she rose compliantly. Her mouth opened. Closed. She bit her lip, looking away. _

_He took a careful step toward the door, and she didn't move with him. He stopped._

"_Are you…" She was even quieter than usual, and he had to lean in closer to hear. "Are you really okay, Senpai?" She hadn't let go of his hand, but she couldn't meet his gaze. "She didn't hurt you?_

_Shirou nodded. "Yeah. Some stuff happened, but Tohsaka saved my life. I know she can be pretty mean sometimes, but she helped me when she didn't have to."_

_Sakura just nodded, her eyes still firmly fixed on the ground. "If… if you say that, then I'll believe you." _

_With a gentle smile, he gave her hand a squeeze. "I do say so, so I'm glad we're on the same page." She didn't respond, but he continued anyway, as warmly as possible. "I saw some pretty good tea in Tohsaka's kitchen. I'll get you some, and we can talk, okay?"_

_For a moment, she tensed, and he thought she was going to run. Instead, she melted into a defeated slump. "Okay."_

He and Rin had been arguing in circles for way too long. Every moment he had to stand here and remind Rin that Sakura was a human being who shouldn't just be put down like a wild animal was another moment that she was locked in a room, by herself, when something was very clearly _wrong._

"If you want to hurt her, you're going to have to go through me," he finally said, planting himself in front of the door. "I'm not going to let you. Master or not."

Rin faced him with a cold expression. "You're picking her over me? After everything I did for you last night?"

"I'm not _picking_ anybody!" Why couldn't she take a step back and see what she was doing? "I'm saying that you don't have to be enemies! You don't need to kill her, and she won't kill you!"

Rin bared her teeth. "You didn't see her out there. She _would_ have killed me if she could have. That's not cowardice. That's realism." She pointed in what Shirou assumed was the direction of the library. "She made it very clear that we are not on the same side when she _attacked me_."

Once again, he tried to picture Sakura the way Rin had described her. Murderous and vengeful. He couldn't do it. Every time he tried, what came to mind was a face like a corpse, empty and broken, the way she'd been when he'd left her alone. He needed to be there for her. "Listen to me," he said with finality. "I'm going to go see her. You can kill me before that happens, or you can let me go. It's up to you."

Rin's eyes widened, but he didn't wait around to see what she'd do. He turned, swiping a key off the small table by the door as he went, clicked the deadbolt, and walked out of the room. She had a clear shot at his back. If she wanted him dead, he'd die. That's all there was to it. If he did, that was fine. At least he would have gone without compromising everything he believed in.

He didn't die, and he wasn't followed.

* * *

The circle pulsed regularly around Archer, enveloping him in a fine mist of mana that seeped into his every pore. It was silent, but he imagined he could hear a quiet humming. It seemed wrong that air so suffused with power should be imperceptible. His wound itched. He did not scratch it.

He had a good idea of what was going on upstairs, and he wanted no part of it. His past was his past, and it should stay his past. There was nothing that would be gained from seeing her again. Nothing that would make his self-appointed job any easier. He hoped Rin won out, he told himself. He hoped Rin would kill her.

That's what he told himself. Not that he was trying to convince himself to stay the course. Not that he'd frozen up the moment he'd heard his Master say Sakura's name. Not that he still cared about any of them after all this time.

The past was the past, and he would not long for what he'd lost a long time ago.

He didn't remember her face. He didn't want to remember.

He remembered her voice, though.

His face twisted into a grimace. "So you're back, I take it," he said to the empty air.

"**I am," **the empty air responded. A moment later, the presence of the invisible, black-armored Servant followed. It weighed down the air, even here. Two blazing points of blue fire materialized in the air, gazing down at him.

Archer regarded the space Assassin's incorporeal form occupied, face carefully blank. This would be a better distraction than wallowing in toxic nostalgia. "So what are you, Assassin?"

"**What I am matters not. I am a Servant. Nothing else matters at this moment."**

He shook his head. _Evasive little shit, aren't you?_ "No, I think it does. You shouldn't _be here_. You've taken a space that isn't yours, like this is a game of fucking musical chairs, and I want to know _why._" Heat crept into his voice. Anger that he hadn't meant to display.

Assassin didn't respond.

"I don't trust anyone," he said finally. "But I _especially_ don't trust you. I don't know why or how you're here, but at _best_, you're a sign that something has gone very, very wrong. I learned a long time ago not to believe in best case scenarios."

"**Curious," **Assassin said, his voice strangely distant. But then, as if the subject had changed while Archer wasn't looking, his voice hardened. "**Distrust fits thee like an old suit of armor. Past the prime of its usefulness, yet too familiar to be discarded."**

Silence hung heavy over the basement. Motes of dust danced in the light. The old house creaked as it settled.

"You know nothing," Archer whispered. "You have no idea what I've been through."

"**Art thou guarded against the true nature of the world, or art thou as a child chasing shadows?" **A detached amusement touched the words. "**To know oneself is to know one's enemy, is it not?"**

Something cold tickled the back of Archer's neck. _A coincidence. That's all. _"Speaking of enemies, I heard some of the yelling," he said absently, leaning back on his hands like a little kid. "You abandoned your Master, huh? Funny. You must want him dead as bad as I do."

"**My Contractor was never alone," **the air said simply.

"But, shouldn't he have been able to-" Archer paused, then chuckled ruefully. "Presence concealment, huh? Guess that's an Assassin for you."

"**Had my Contractor ever been in true danger, I would not have hesitated to act," **he rumbled. "**Neither Rider nor the girl ever carried any intent to kill, today."**

"Then why? What was the point of all of that?" No matter how he looked at it, it was a strange decision. Ready to act or not, it seemed like an unnecessary risk to take. "You had no guarantee you could put yourself in the way in time. Enemy Servants are fast, you know."

"**I am faster."**

"You still haven't answered my question."

"**A simple test of observation. If my Contractor believed that I was present, his behavior may have been altered,"** Assassin said simply. "**I wished to take the measure of him on his own. I wished to see who he was in the dark."**

"That's it? And what'd you find out?" Archer snorted. "He's an idiot? I could have told you that for free."

"**My Contractor is overly idealistic. Optimistic, perhaps beyond the bounds of good sense. He believes in people who have given him no reason to think of them as anything but enemies."**

"You've got that right," Archer muttered. Maybe Assassin wasn't such a jackass after all-

"**Shirou Emiya is a good man."**

Or not.

With a roll of his eyes, Archer heaved a heavy sigh. "You too, huh? I don't know what you're all so blinded by when it comes to him." He paused, then gave a rueful shrug. "I mean, I guess _you_ kind of have a stake in liking him, since he's your Master, but-"

"**I do not like him. I do not dislike him. There is a place for good men, but I am unsure if a good man is what the situation requires." **A heavy pause. "**But I need not lecture thee on this subject. Thou hast some knowledge of being a good man in a world that is not kind to the righteous, I believe."**

_Again._

"What does that mean?" he asked quietly, a dangerous edge in his voice. His fingers twitched, longing for a blade. Bile rose in his throat.

Cold eyes bore into his soul, a blinding searchlight shining directly in his eyes. They pierced him, blasted through him, tore his defenses to shreds with the force of that look-

_He can't-_

Half remembered pain and fire. Self-loathing pumped through his veins like filthy blood, and he felt _seen_ in a sense he was in no way comfortable with.

_How could he-_

The presence disappeared once more, fading away as Assassin climbed the stairs.

"_What does that mean, Assassin?"_

* * *

With a gentle knock on the door, Shirou closed his eyes and leaned against the frame. "Sakura? It's me. I'm by myself."

"Yes, um…" Sakura's muffled voice said haltingly from the other side. "Come in, Senpai."

Shirou fumbled for a moment with the old iron key, grumbling meaninglessly to himself until there was a satisfying _click_ as the lock released_. _He pushed the door open, slowly re-entering the library.

Sakura was sitting on the ground a few meters in front of him, her knees folded under her. The blanket he'd found for her, scratchy and weighty though it was, was wrapped around her shoulders like a kid playing at being a queen. The mug he'd given her sat at her side, and it looked empty as he approached.

For a moment, he almost couldn't look her in the eyes. Seeing that pain again…. it would almost have been too much. But when he mustered up the courage, she was smiling up at him. She looked the way she usually did when she was sick; a little pale, a little sweaty, and he couldn't ignore how red her eyes still were, but she was trying to put on a good front. To pretend she was okay. "Hello," she said quietly, her voice just a touch raspy.

"Hey, Sakura," he said, returning her smile with as warm a grin as he could muster. He sat down facing her, crossing his legs under him as he did. "How're you feeling?"

She glanced away, and a touch of color tinged her cheeks. "I'm feeling much better than I was before." Was that embarrassment, was it shame? He genuinely wasn't sure. "I'm sorry I worried you and Tohsaka-senpai."

With a firm shake of his head, he regarded her frankly. "You don't need to apologize, Sakura. You're my friend. Of course I'll worry about you."

Sakura couldn't meet his eyes. "Still. I did something silly, and I made trouble." His chest ached with concern, but he remembered those early days well enough to know that she might not take a clear expression of it well right now.

"Sakura, listen. You're not my enemy. And no matter what Tohsaka says, I don't think you're hers either."

She stiffened, but didn't reply.

Her skin was cold as ice when he reached out to touch her hand. "Tohsaka says you're a Master." He could see her withdrawing into herself, and he pressed on. "Even if you are, it doesn't change anything. You're my friend, and nobody's going to hurt you."

Sakura sat back, drawing her knees to her chest. Her gaze was fixed on a faraway point to her left. "I gave her up."

Shirou blinked. "You… huh?"

"My Servant," she whispered. "I gave her up. I'm not a Master anymore. Not really."

He gave her a tentative smile. "Then Tohsaka won't have any reason to want to do anything, right?" That was a relief to hear. It didn't change anything for him either way, but it might be easier to convince Rin to let Sakura be this way.

"I didn't want you to be part of this," she said shakily. "I wanted you to be safe. And now you're… fighting."

"I'm okay?" Shirou rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a little awkward. "I've got Rin on my side, and I do have a Servant. I'm not on my own."

"She won't be forever," Sakura said. "She'll hurt you when the time comes."

A slow frown overtook his expression. There was a strange conviction in the words that gave him more than a little pause. _Does she know something about Rin that I don't, or is she just scared and hurting? _"Why do you say that? Were you two friends?"

"Is your Servant strong?" she asked as though he hadn't spoken, throwing Shirou for a loop.

"Yeah, he's, uh…" Phantom pain buzzed through him as he imagined Assassin in the moonlight, armor seeming to absorb all the color around him. The brief flashes he'd gotten of Assassin's clashes with Berserker. "He's pretty tough. Don't worry about me, okay?"

Sakura seemed to mull this over, then she nodded. She smiled, and he thought he caught a glimpse of her normal self in it. "Okay. I'm glad you have that, at least."

Shirou leaned over to check her cup. Just as he'd suspected, it was empty. "Was that good? Do you want another cup?"

She shook her head, then looked chagrined. "I mean, yes, I liked it very much. But, um. I don't think I should go out there right now…"

Shirou gave the closed door a wry glance. "Yeah, I think Tohsaka might need a little while to cool off. But I can go get you some more."

Pulling the blanket a little tighter around herself, Sakura shook her head, but not unhappily. "Thank you, but I think I'm okay."

Was that the truth? He was having a harder time getting a read on her than usual. Or… was he just being more honest with himself about what he saw? Had she ever been okay, or had he just convinced himself that she was because he wanted her to be? Challenging her on it didn't seem like the right thing to do, though, so he just gave her another smile and kept talking.

"Yeah, I summoned an Assassin. Kind of by accident, you know? I'm not really much of a Magus, but-" He hesitated. With everything going on, he hadn't thought about what Sakura's being here actually meant. "Wait, does this mean that you're a Magus too?"

Something he couldn't identify passed over her face, so quickly he might have imagined it. She looked away. "Yes." Her hands tightened on her legs. "I'm sorry I hid that from you."

Shirou ran the idea through his head, turning it over, this way and that, to see if the lie was something that made him feel hurt. _Sakura knows magic. _He prodded at it. _I don't know anything about the way she was raised, or what she was taught._ How did that make him feel? "I understand," he said truthfully. "I don't know a lot about Magi, but my father always told me how important it was to keep that kind of thing secret. It's not like I ever told you that I knew all that stuff. Your family probably told you the same thing, right?"

She examined him out of the corners of her eyes. What was she looking for? A lie? Anger? She wouldn't find any such thing. Finally, she looked away again and nodded. "Yeah. Probably for different reasons, though."

"What do you mean?"

Sakura laughed quietly; he might have thought he imagined the edge of self-directed derision it contained, if he couldn't see how badly she was hurting. "I'm not a very good Magus. If people knew how weak I was, it'd make my family look bad." It sounded like she believed what she was saying, wholeheartedly.

Still, Shirou felt himself breaking out in a lopsided grin. "That's okay, I'm pretty bad at it too. You know, I've been training for years, and I can still only do one thing. Strengthening. Tohsaka thought that was pretty embarrassing when she found out, and I guess I can see why, but I worked really hard for it so I'm not annoyed." He leaned forward eagerly. "What kind of stuff can you do?"

The light in her eyes, so fragile and momentary, flickered and died. "I don't really want to talk about that right now."

A pang of guilt shot through him, and he shook his head. "Okay, then we won't. What were we, uh…." He fumbled for a few moments, then snapped his fingers. "Right! Assassin. He looks and sounds really scary, but he's actually very dependable. He's saved my life a couple times already, so I think I'm in good hands." He smiled, and his black eye stung. "Ow." Illya had made everything hurt a little less, but she hadn't quite made any of it go away. He was still grateful, but he wished she could have done a little bit more.

That lifeless look gave way to a kind of sad amusement. "Well, if he's so reliable, then I guess I can't complain too much." She glanced down. "Does he have black armor?"

Shirou blinked. "Uh, yeah, actually. Black armor, big spikes. He's really tall. Oh, and he's got a really creepy skull face, too, but he doesn't seem like such a bad guy."

_She already knew that. What else does she know? _Sakura's expression was so carefully neutral that Shirou knew she must be hiding some kind of reaction, but once again, this was not the time to push. "Hey, um." He felt sheepish all of a sudden, and found himself looking away. "I'm sorry I didn't let you know that I was okay. I didn't even think about how it might look if you decided to come see me this morning."

"You had a lot on your mind, Senpai." She rested her cheek on her knee and closed her eyes with a sigh. She did seem less tense than she had when he'd walked in, so he must be doing _something _right. Aside from stepping on the occasional land mine. "I'm not upset with you. I was afraid, but now I'm just glad you're okay."

"Also, by the time I realized I wasn't going to be home to clean up a little, I was kind of unconscious?"

Her eye opened just a crack. "So, when Father Kotomine said-"

Shirou groaned involuntarily. "You saw _him?"_

She nodded matter-of-factly. "Yes, he told me where you were. Kind of. He, um, made it sound like Tohsaka-senpai had beaten you up and kidnapped you. So I thought…"

Shirou wasn't sure exactly what face he made at that, but it was enough to make her giggle. That made him laugh, too, and his sour mood receded. "That guy's a bastard, Sakura. I don't think you can trust much that he says. I was out like a light, but Tohsaka didn't do it. She carried me here, actually."

"Yeah…" She looked doubtful.

Shirou hesitated. It might not be a good idea to ask this, but… "Sakura? Are you going to be in danger?"

She shook her head, but her smile took on a brittle fragility. "No, I don't think so. I'll be okay."

With a frown, he leaned in closer. She blinked at him. "Are you sure? I don't know what your circumstances are, but this is all pretty dangerous. Someone might think you're still a Master and try to hurt you."

She shook her head. "No, I don't think so," she said again, as though it were something rehearsed. Her tone suggested that she was implying something different, but he didn't feel like he had enough information to pull out the real meaning.

He felt like he had to ask. "Is Shinji the Matou Master now?"

Sakura hesitated, the corner of her mouth twitching violently, then nodded.

Shirou… wasn't sure how to feel about that, but he was pretty sure it didn't feel great. "Then even if you don't get attacked directly, you could be caught in the crossfire. Do you think he'll go out of his way to protect you?" He kept his voice as carefully neutral as possible — he wanted it to be a genuine, good faith question.

It wasn't really, though.

Sakura flinched. Her eyes cast back downward. "Yes," she said in a quiet monotone.

A familiar anger growled hungrily in his chest. "Did something happen?" He asked in a level voice.

She shook her head in a way that said something absolutely had.

Shirou reached his hand out a little, then hesitated. He didn't want to make things worse, but… He touched her shoulder. The blanket's material was rough and scratchy, but she felt surprisingly solid underneath it. "Sakura… I think you should stay with us. Just until all of this blows over."

She didn't look at him, and she didn't speak right away, but he gave her time to respond. "I couldn't… be a burden like that."

Shirou laughed quietly, more for effect than anything else. "Sakura, how many times have you taken care of me, or cooked meals for me when I was sick or busy, or helped me around the house? If it'll make you feel better, you can pretend I'm just paying you back for all that nice stuff you've done for me since we've been friends."

A war raged on her face. He didn't know exactly what she was saying to herself, the arguments she was making, but she clearly, badly wanted to say yes. And for some reason, she couldn't.

He gave her shoulder a little squeeze. "Besides, how are you going to protect me from all the way over there?"

A tiny gasp. He wouldn't even have heard it if the room hadn't been so utterly silent. She bit her lip. Chewed it for a few seconds. Finally, Sakura relaxed a little, gave a silent nod, and without preamble changed the subject. "So, um. What... happened?"

He blew out a long breath, trying to smoothly switch gears, despite the overwhelming relief and worry he felt. "Well, I guess it started last night. I stayed late cleaning the archery dojo, and I heard this weird clanging…" He told her everything, but he did downplay a few things. He hadn't been stabbed through the heart at school; it had been a glancing blow that had knocked him down. It wasn't pain that Assassin caused, but a deep exhaustion, like the feeling he used to get in his arms after a long day of archery.

It wasn't that he didn't trust her to know those things. He did, no matter what Rin said. She was just… carrying so much pain and worry. It was so heavy on her. She didn't need to know the horrible, gory details. She didn't know how badly the night had hurt, or how scared he'd been.

He wasn't a good storyteller. He kept stumbling over himself, forgetting details and having to circle back, mentioning things that hadn't happened yet. If he had to grade himself on presentation, he'd have no choice but to award himself a D+ at best. And yet…

Every time he described being in danger, her eyes would get wide, or her breathing would pick up, or she'd scoot a little closer. She laughed when he'd mention funny details that he remembered. She even gave his arm an ironic soothing pat when he described throwing his water glass, the kind you might give a worked up little kid who had done something silly over nothing. The worry lines on her forehead smoothed away. Her smile began to touch her eyes again. She started to look like the happy, if subdued, girl that he'd known. Maybe it was just a feeling of relief that he was okay, finally sinking in. Maybe it was a feeling of trust and maybe she was just fixing her mask. He knew he couldn't be sure.

But he kept talking, and he kept laughing, and he kept smiling. Even during the parts that didn't make him feel like he wanted to. Because if he could smile about everything that had happened, maybe she would too.

* * *

Rin didn't go to her room to scream into her pillow, but she thought about it really hard. Instead, she went to her room and meditated furiously, which in retrospect was probably counterproductive. By the time the knock came at her door, though, most of the anger had simmered out, leaving her mostly just tired and vaguely irritated. "Who is it?" she snapped, knowing damn well who it was.

"Me," Shirou's voice said helpfully. "Can we talk? Without all the yelling, maybe?"

"I wasn't yelling," Rin yelled back.

"Okay, then _I_ won't yell," he said. Even through the door, he sounded as tired as she did. "Can you open the door, though, or are we going to do it like this?"

She glowered at the door, a headache throbbing in her temples. It had been a long few days. "Fine." She lifted a hand and snapped her fingers, infusing the gesture with a hint of power. Her deadbolt clicked, and a moment later Shirou entered.

He was still wearing the same nasty clothes, but she supposed he didn't exactly have a spare set with him. She would take the high road and not hold it against him, even if it was more than he deserved. "What do you want?"

Shirou sighed and ran a hand through his hair. At least he'd remembered to wash it before he'd gotten back into- no, no, she _just said _she wasn't going to do that. "Just so we're on the same page, you're not going to turn me into a frog or whatever, right?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Not at the moment." But god, was it tempting. She wasn't any good at transmutation, but some good old-fashioned body horror might do him some good. She didn't budge from where she reclined on her bed.

"Sakura doesn't have a Servant. She isn't a threat," he said, crossing his arms stubbornly. "Even if she wanted to fight, she can't. You don't need to kill her."

That couldn't be relief she felt. That would be a silly thing to feel. "You know this because she told you?" she asked, dripping with skepticism.

"Yes." He seemed to think he wasn't leaving any room for argument. "I checked her hands. She doesn't have a Command Seal."

"That's not the only place they can appear, you know," she countered, lazily brushing hair from her face. "You can't know for sure unless you've looked everywhere." A knowing smirk spread across her face. "Did you look everywhere, Shirou?"

His face instantly went bright red. "Wha-"

She waved a hand dismissively, letting her face go neutral again. "Don't worry. If I thought you had, I'd probably just kill you. She's not in a good place right now."

"Yeah, I don't think you trying to kill her was much help with that," he said pointedly. "You've got weird standards for what's okay and what's not in war."

She refused to consider the idea that he might be right. "I'm not going to apologize for that. I don't know if I believe she's not an enemy, but I'll believe she doesn't have a Servant anymore. She didn't try to kill me with it, and it hasn't shown up to bust her out, so sure. What's the Servant's identity?"

"I don't know."

"Its class?" Rin grilled him, refusing to give him time to think.

"I don't know."

"What happened to it?"

"She gave it away."

"To?"

"Shinji." He was matter of fact.

"Is that all you've got?" She was unimpressed. _He could try a little harder, couldn't he?_

He gave her an incredulous look. "I'm not your spy. I didn't go in there into interrogate her, Tohsaka. She's scared and she's hurting, and I talked to her until she felt better. She needs a friend."

_He's like a kindergartener. _Rin snorted. "I reminded you earlier, but it seems like you've forgotten already. This is a war, Emiya. There's no time for friendship, and there's no time to play therapist. Every minute we don't spend preparing or planning is a minute that our enemies are getting an advantage."

"I'm not in this fight to win, Tohsaka," he said calmly. "I'm here to keep as many people safe as possible. Even if Sakura wasn't my friend, she's innocent. If I start throwing people away to get the Grail, I won't be any better than…" He looked her dead in the eye. "Someone who would use it for personal gain."

The headache pulsed, entwining with the gnawing hunger in her gut to make a truly ugly feeling. "So, what? I'm not going to kill her. That's what you want to hear, right? Is that all?"

He shook his head. "I told you I wasn't picking sides, and I meant it. I'm going to keep Sakura safe, but that doesn't mean we have to stop working together. Nothing has changed."

Was that true? _Had _nothing changed? It felt like a lot had changed. She grimaced. "Okay, here's the deal. We're still allies. But I am not keeping her in my house. You want to protect her? Take her home. She's your responsibility. I won't lift a finger for her."

"Fine." He held up a finger. "One condition."

Her lip twitched, and she wasn't sure it it was trying to become a begrudging smile or a snarl. Maybe both. "Which is?"

"We spend tonight here. It's dark, and you can probably remember what happened last time we moved around after dark." She opened her mouth, and he shook his head. "I'll still cook dinner for you as payment."

Her stomach roared traitorously, and she threw a pillow at him out of sheer spite. The jerk actually caught it. "Fine. But it had better be the best goddamn dinner I've ever had in my life."

Shirou nodded seriously. "Thank you."

She frowned. "For what?"

"Doing the right thing," he said simply, and was gone.

"Yeah, and it's going to get us all killed," she muttered petulantly at the empty doorframe. "And it'll be your fault."

* * *

_Thank you all for sticking around! 3 See you next week!_

_Next chapter: Omen_


	12. Omen

_You may have noticed that the fic's title is now slightly different. And Hell Followed With Them is now the official title. Maybe that doesn't seem like anything to make a big deal about, but that subtle difference makes a world of difference to me, and to the meaning of this story that I am crafting. _

_There was a moment, writing chapter 27 (yes, I've written that far ahead), where this fic finally thematically clicked for me. All at once, I could see how the things I had been building up tied together, and really formed the soul of what I'm writing. It's not that I'm retroactively applying meaning, it's more like my eyes were opened to what I had already been creating. That sounds super pretentious, but I AM an English major. c: _

_Hopefully, the reasons for the change will become apparent in time. Fanfiction or not, if I spend this much time and emotional energy creating something, I want to it to be meaningful. I don't know if this fic is meaningful or just pretentious, but if it means something to me, maybe it'll mean something to someone else. It really does mean a lot to me._

_EDIT: Also, I've just been reminded that it's still Ramadan, and I know I've got readers who observe. There's a bunch of food talk in this chapter, if that's something you'd like to avoid during your fasting. I'm sorry that this warning didn't go up when the chapter did._

* * *

Cooking was meditative for Sakura. All she had to focus on was the slow, methodical _chop, chop, chop_ as she sliced vegetables, the pleasant, comforting scents of onion and ginger wafting through the air. None of her worries, none of her guilt, none of her pain. Just losing herself in the process of creation. The normalcy of it all.

_Chop, chop, chop._

It had taken some coaxing to get her out of the library, and she still wasn't sure she shouldn't just go back there to hide. Rin still hadn't come downstairs, and she didn't feel confident about how that particular reunion would go. Her mind touched on the memory of confrontation and recoiled, a finger on a hot stove. It was easier to wallow in miseries she understood than it was to lose herself in that morass. To think about what her brother would do to her when he got his hands on her again, or what Grandfather was planning for Senpai, or how badly she'd handled… well, anything today. It was a dark hole she knew very well, and she was comfortable in it.

_Chop, chop, chop._

But, now that she _had _come out, going back would have felt like admitting defeat. She already looked like such a weak person to Senpai. She didn't want to make it worse. So she didn't run, and she didn't let Senpai know that being back in the Tohsaka mansion was like enveloped by a ghost. She wasn't sure what the feelings were that stirred inside her every time a familiar angle or an old piece of furniture she'd lounged in when she was very small caught her gaze, but they were powerful. An emptiness, perhaps, but a different flavor than she was used to. Loss? She'd had a home that hadn't hated her, once. Resentment? One of them still enjoyed the luxury of living in a house without the worm pit, and it wasn't her. Maybe none of them, or else all of them. So much was the same.

She halfway wondered if Tohsaka-Senpai ever moved anything in the house.

It really didn't seem that way.

_Chop, chop, chop._

She wasn't doing most of the work tonight; she'd tried to, but Senpai had said something about how he'd made a commitment, and he wasn't going to push the work onto her. It was sweet. That was just the way Senpai thought; he had a one track mind, but that one track was always focused on doing the right thing. She'd never known him to be anything else. Something sizzled behind her, and she glanced back to see Senpai drop a handful of chopped chicken into hot oil, tossing them a little with a hand on the wok's handle as he did. While she'd been chipping away at the veggies, he'd also gotten a pot of rice started, thrown together the sauce and set it simmering, and even scraped together some miso soup.

It was pretty hypnotic, watching him work, his dirty clothes semi-covered by a white apron that was clearly sized for Rin, not him. He was so focused, with his brow furrowed and his mouth a hard line. She remembered a time when she'd thought that look had meant he was angry with her, but he'd always been so confused when she'd tried to fix whatever she thought she'd done. The idea still seemed foreign to her, sometimes. She didn't see that look as much anymore; it wasn't often that he cooked a big meal in front of her without splitting the work evenly.

The sizzling reached a fever pitch; it had gotten hot in the kitchen, so Senpai had rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. She was struck by how well-defined his muscles were; he was so gentle that it was easy to forget how strong he was. He trained a lot.

When they cooked together, it was at a much more relaxed pace. Four hands could do more than two. It was almost nostalgic watching him pass through the kitchen like a whirlwind, chaotic and lightning-quick and yet somehow leaving everything cleaner than he'd found it. She'd often said that he could be the best in the world if he put his mind to it, and though he'd often laughed it off, she'd never really been joking. It came naturally to him in a way that little ever had for her. Archery, maybe. She admired that. She was a better cook than she had ever been before, and she tried very hard to take pride in that. Sometimes that worked, but usually it felt like her rapid improvement said more about his infectious enthusiasm and ability to teach than it did about her. And sometimes it just made her feel selfish, when she thought about how nice it would be to surpass him someday.

Not right now, though. Now was…

Now, she couldn't take her eyes off of him.

Now, she felt more at peace than she had in a long time.

He was in his own little world, until he turned around to get the veggies from her. He paused, looking at her, perplexed. Then, of all things, his cheeks went a little red, and he held out his hand. "Got it ready?"

_What kind of face was I making? _she wondered. _Was I staring that bad…?_ Heat touched her own cheeks, and she nodded a little too fervently as that sense of calm vanished as if it had never been there at all. "Yes! I'm all ready for you!" She shoved the big bowl of greens at him with jerky motions (a mushroom leapt from the bowl and hit the floor with a sad _whap) _and turned away, pretending to busy herself picking little bits of vegetable off the cutting board.

She could feel his eyes burning into the back of her neck, and she wanted to curl up into herself and disappear. What was wrong with her? Everything she had felt over the course of the day had seemed strangely magnified, as if there were a chorus of Sakuras in her head, all feeling the same thing. When she chanced a glance behind her, though, he wasn't looking at her at all. His back was to her, and he was cheerfully tossing the stir-fry. He was humming.

_You're being stupid again, Sakura. Just be normal again. You can do that, right? _With his sweet voice in her ears, she thought that maybe she could. Her smile returned, hesitant and embarrassed. Turning away again, she picked up the cutting board and took it to the sink. Under her breath, so quietly that even she could only hear it over the hiss of the wok and the sound of water through the vibrations in her throat, she started humming along with him.

* * *

They were all sitting at the dining table, and it was maybe the most awkward dinner Shirou had been a part of. He'd once eaten dinner at an all-night diner with Fuji-nee after she'd been dumped by a longtime boyfriend at a kendo tournament she'd lost in the finals, so that particular bar was already set pretty high.

Rin sat at the head of the table. Archer sat to her right. Three seats down from him sat Sakura, and Shirou had placed himself across from her. None of them were speaking. Sakura rolled a little ball of rice back and forth in her bowl with her chopsticks. Archer looked disinterested. Rin was examining her food as if there was poison hidden somewhere in it. Rin had yet to acknowledge Sakura, and Sakura looked as though she expected Rin to pull out a gun the moment Sakura did anything wrong.

He complained a lot about how dinner with Fuji-nee would often get rowdy and out of hand, but this made him miss her antics more than he'd ever thought he would. What this table needed was for someone to discover red pepper in their rice, just to liven it up a little. "Sakura," he said into the silence.

Her head whipped up, wide eyed as if he'd just fired a cannon into the air. "Ah, yes?"

"How did I do on the chicken? It's not too dry, is it?" He smiled encouragingly. "It's a different stove than I'm used to, so I'm worried it might be a little overdone."

She blinked at him, went red, and hurriedly stabbed her chopsticks into her bowl to retrieve a piece of meat. Once it was in her mouth, she chewed thoughtfully. "No, Senpai, I think you did good!"

With that, the tension dissipated just a hair. Not much, but just enough so that everyone could start eating. He watched Rin out of the corner of his eye. Every bite was the same; she'd taste it, a hint of joy would touch her eyes, and then her face would darken as she got mad about liking it so much. Over and over. He couldn't help but laugh, and she shot him a glare that would have peeled paint off a wall.

Even Sakura smiled a little, though she tried to hide it. She was sweet as honey, but she could hit you with a pretty decent playful jab if she was in a good mood and you weren't paying attention. He wasn't too surprised.

And just when things were almost normal, for the first time since he'd left for the supermarket, Assassin's baritone filled his ears. "**Contractor." **Rin and Archer were unfazed, but Sakura jerked into a ramrod-straight posture with an _eep_, eyes darting nervously back and forth. "**Might I have a word with thee, away from other ears?" **It was a question, but it really didn't sound like one.

Indignation flooded him. He'd almost forgotten about his traitor of a Servant. "Hold on, _now_ you want to talk?" Shirou frowned. "You ran off on me. Where did you go?"

"**I have an important matter to discuss with thee." **He spoke as if Shirou hadn't protested at all.

"I got attacked. Aren't you supposed to be looking out for me?"

"**Art thou still drawing breath?"**

Shirou grimaced.

"**Then I shall await thee in the basement."**

Rin cackled, and he shot her a dirty look. Sakura was shaking a little, but she was also trying very hard to look like she was eating normally, so he didn't press her.

"You heard the man," Archer said lazily. "Run on home, kid. You're out past curfew."

"Don't you have a fight to go lose somewhere?" he shot back.

"You'd be dead if it wasn't for me." He didn't seem particularly bothered, or even interested. "What did you do against Berserker, again? Fall down at him?"

"I stopped Assassin from cutting your head off," Shirou growled. "That's something I did."

"By falling down at him, yes." Archer took a condescending bite of chicken. "And you overcooked this."

"No, you didn't," Sakura mumbled in a small voice. Rin and Archer both turned their gazes on her like the impassive judgement of angry gods, and she shrank into her seat.

With a grimace, Shirou swiped his bowl off the table. "I'm going to go talk to Assassin." He gestured violently at Rin and Archer with his chopsticks. "Get along with Sakura while I'm gone. No bullying her."

Sakura went red with… something. Probably shame. She shook her head. "Don't worry about me, Senpai. I'll be okay." She still seemed a little on edge, and Shirou didn't really want to leave her alone, but… Assassin was very persuasive.

He left them to their silent meal and stomped down the stairs, chewing furiously. The basement, like apparently every other room in the house, was expansive, though the others had not been so cluttered. "What?"

"**Sakura Matou."**

_Oh, not this crap again. _Shirou threw up his hands in irritation. "What about her?"

"**Has she truly earned thy trust?"**

"I'm getting really sick of having this conversation, Assassin," he said, taking a seat on the bottom step. He put some steel in his voice. "I'm not going to budge on this."

"**Then there is something that I must tell thee."**

Shirou stuffed some rice into his mouth, glowering at the empty air. "And what's that? I already had this fight once. She's not a Master anymore."

"**I speak not of the Grail War. Darkness and shadow gather around her. Clothe her and crown her. It emanates from her, like blood from a fresh corpse. Canst thou not smell the rot?"**

The food soured in his stomach, turning to lead, and he set the bowl down beside himself. That… was very different from whatever Rin's problem had been. "What does that mean, Assassin? What darkness? What rot?"

"**If I knew, I would tell thee," **Assassin rumbled. "**It is not a rot of the flesh. I do not know what it portends."**

"Don't know a lot, do you?" Shirou asked, but he knew it was because he was suddenly afraid. Sakura being a Master was something he understood. What did that make this? _It doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that I'm going to protect her. _"So, what? You want me to kill her, too?"

"**I do not believe you capable of making such a decision," **Assassin said, but he didn't sound like he was insulting Shirou. He wasn't sure what to make of that. "**I merely advise thee caution. The blight on her soul may amount to nothing, though leaving one's fate to chance has never been the wise man's best course of action. If thou art determined to protect her, then thou must consider the risks. Do not let this wound fester."**

Shirou looked at his hands, trying to process everything Assassin had just said. "I don't know what you mean by 'rot.' I don't know what you see." They were bruised and scabbed, rough with calluses. "But I can't live my life just… suspicious of the people I care about. That's not what trust is. Rin could kill me, but I believe she's a good person. Sakura could… I don't know. Whatever it is you think would happen. But I _know_ her. Maybe…" The image of her kneeling outside Rin's house, pale and shaking and clawing at her own scalp came unbidden to his mind, and he grimaced as a pang of anxiety and sorrow twisted his insides. "Maybe I don't know everything she's been through. Maybe she hasn't been ready to share. Maybe I… maybe I haven't earned _her _trust yet. But that's not the point. There are always going to be things I don't know about people, Assassin. Everybody has-"

_can't breathe choking choking pain he is boiling in his own skin and his life will have no meaning if he cannot save the people he could not save_

"-some kind of shadow, don't they?"

"**The world will not become a fair place because it is thy wish it were so. This corruption will spread. She will become it."**

"If no one ever betrayed anyone, would trusting someone mean anything?" A quiet voice in his head that might have been Rin's, or maybe Archer's, or maybe just his own, said he was just being stubborn. It whispered that he was just raging against reality because he was too stupid to open his eyes and see his own naivete for what it was. He refused to accept that.

Assassin seemed to consider this. He hoped it wasn't because whatever he'd said was just that staggeringly stupid. "**An admirable ideal,"** he finally conceded. "**It may lead to thy death, but I believe thou wilt not compromise even then."**

Shirou felt a weird rush of vindication. "Thanks?"

"**If Sakura Matou falls to the darkness within her, I will take her head without hesitation," **Assassin said with finality. "**But until then… Thou hast demonstrated thy conviction. Until her time comes, I should like to be proven wrong."**

Shirou didn't like it. _Sakura's darkness… Whatever it is, it isn't her. She wouldn't hurt me_. But Assassin's promise… it was probably the best he was going to get. "Fine."

"**The war will continue, in any event. What is thy plan?"**

His food had gotten cold, but he kept eating it anyway. At least it was still good. "My plan? Uh, well, Tohsaka is kicking us out, so I guess I'm going to take Sakura home in the morning. After that.." He shrugged, self conscious. "I don't know. I don't know if Rin will even still help me."

"**The young Magus will not abandon thee."**

_Okay? That's a weird thing for him to be so certain of. _"Anyway. Um. I was going to ask if you had any ideas."

"**Fortunately, I have information that may be of some use."**

Shirou blinked. "Why didn't you tell us earlier?"

"**I do not wish to share sensitive information with Sakura Matou, and if thee knew, thou might have rushed off before thine rest was complete."**

"No, I wouldn't have," he protested, but he knew he absolutely might have.

"**After thy confrontation with Rider-"**

"Wait, you were there for that? Why were you acting like you weren't?"

But Assassin just kept talking as if he hadn't spoken.

"**-I followed her for a spell. Not long, but long enough to overhear something that may be worthwhile."**

Shirou frowned, chewing thoughtfully. "How did you do that without her knowing? They should have been able to sense you, right?"

"**Her master had given her a cellular device with which to stay in contact. Upon taking her leave-"**

"You know what a cell phone is?"

"**She placed a call to someone she only called 'old man.' While I could not draw too close without alerting her to my presence, and thus could only hear her side of the conversation, she made reference to what she called the 'worst case scenario.' She mentioned a place called Ryuudou Temple. Does this have meaning to thee?"**

His frown deepened. "Ryuudou… Yeah, I know that place. My friend Issei lives there. What did she say about it?"

"**Nothing of substance. She seemed to be suggesting it as a location for something, but the old man to whom she spoke did not agree. 'I can take care of them,' she said, but the old man was adamant."**

"Them…" Shirou's mind raced. "You think there's a Master hiding out at the Temple?"

"**I see few alternatives. Whatever they wish to accomplish, some entity or entities therein have the power to prevent them from doing so. A Master and Servant would be the simplest answer to the riddle."**

"So we don't know where Rider is," he mused, "and fighting Berserker is out of the question for us right now, but we know there's someone there. Do you think we should investigate?"

"**Tomorrow, at midday. If the Master has prepared defenses, they will be weakest then."**

Shirou nodded. "Okay. So…" He blinked. "Guess I'm missing school tomorrow, huh?"

"**Is that the greatest of thy worries at this moment in time?"**

Shirou's cheeks grew warm with embarrassment. "I guess not."

"**Shall I present this to your allies?"**

"Um…" He thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. "Nah, Rin's… pretty pissed off at me, and if I come to her with a lead and a plan, maybe she'll mellow out a little." He shrugged, scraping the last bit of room temperature rice into his mouth. "I'm tired of being a liability."

"**Then I shall leave this matter to thy discretion."**

"Okay, good talk," Shirou said, standing up and dusting himself off. He turned to go up the stairs, then hesitated. A series of horrific images flashed before his eyes; Sakura, killed by magic, for stumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time. '_I will show you the meaning of duty, Contractor.'_ Her severed head, eyes staring lifelessly at him. _But in the end, what is your duty? _

"Assassin?"

He couldn't leave this alone. Assassin had said enough to let Shirou know what type of person he was, which meant that Shirou _needed_ to ask something he very much did not want to.

"**I am here."**

"Say… Say you could get the Holy Grail, right now, and you could destroy it, but to do that, you'd have to kill innocent people." He closed his eyes. "If you had to kill me and Tohsaka and maybe a bunch more people, but you'd be able to save a lot more than just us. Would you do it?"

"**Whilst thou still possess a Command Seal, I would be able to do no such thing."**

"But would you do it?" He didn't want to hear the answer. He didn't, but he asked anyway.

"**I am sworn to protect you by the Contract with which I was summoned. No harm shall come to you through my blade."**

"Not me, then," he said more calmly than he felt. "But anyone else? If it was a choice between your God's will and that, would you kill innocent people for your duty?"

"**Yes." **The word hung in the air like a guillotine in the moments before an execution.

Cold fear wrapped around his throat, but he nodded weakly. "I guess I should hope it doesn't come to that, then."

"**Indeed."**

* * *

The old man was gross, but at least he knew to respect her. The first time she'd been summoned, while that pathetic girl had been too afraid to speak, he'd warmly called her "young lady". She appreciated the first attempt, and when she corrected him as to the proper way to address her ("Queen Medb," or just "Your Majesty"), he had politely complied. That was more than she could say for the boy who was only her "Master" in the most _technical_ of terms. He'd tried to treat her the same way he treated what seemed to be every other girl in the world, so she'd had to teach him a thing or two about the way the world worked.

Now he mostly just cringed around whenever she was near, and was thus beneath her notice. She wondered if he'd be so afraid of his sister the next time they met; he'd made a big show of how much trouble she was in, but he was also a pathetic sack of shit, so he might not have the balls to do anything.

She hadn't really placed that protection order on the girl because of any attempt at solidarity or altruism. It had just seemed like the slimeball liked hurting her, so she'd taken away his favorite pastime like a mother taking away a misbehaving child's toy. That outburst in the alley, though… it had piqued her interest. It was academic, now, but maybe there was a little fire in there, somewhere. It was nice to know she'd have a fallback source of mana if he got his stupid ass killed.

The old man pressed his hands together thoughtfully, closing his weird beady little black eyes with a sigh. "I had truly hoped that it wouldn't come to this." He shifted in the easy chair in which he sat; for a second, she thought that creaking sound came from his rickety old bones, rather than the leather beneath him. "I had not planned to play my hand so soon. It would have been best to consolidate my power before the next Holy Grail War."

Medb lounged on a couch, her feet up on a coffee table that must have cost the old man a fortune. It was nothing compared to what she had once owned, though, so it deserved no more dignity than a footstool. "Why not wait?" She asked idly. "The Grail will still be here, won't it?"

"Hmm," the old man hmmed. "The Grail will, and I will, and my darling granddaughter will. But, you see, there is the problem of our mutual friend."

"Assassin?" Medb shrugged, picking at the stitches on a throw pillow. Real shoddy workmanship, if you asked her. "You say he's scary and all, but you could take or leave this war. It doesn't matter to you."

The old man laughed like a snake on slimy, dead leaves. "Once is never, twice is always."

Medb looked at him askance. "Is that supposed to mean something?" Sometimes the old man just said cryptic shit without bothering to explain himself. It was his worst quality. (Most of his qualities were bad.)

"When something happens once, it is an anomaly," he lectured. "Anything can happen once, after all. If a man is hit by a car, one does not extrapolate that he will be struck again in the future. Mistakes and accidents are a reality for anyone." He cleared his throat. "But twice… If a man is struck, recovers, then walks back into the street to be hit again… What does that say about him?"

"He's an idiot?" she guessed, growing bored.

"That is one possibility, yes. Or perhaps he wishes for death, or perhaps he enjoys the thrill. The reason doesn't matter. If he survives this second anomaly, do you then trust this man anywhere near a busy street?"

She shifted her feet, leaving a scuff on the table. "Are you trying to say the universe is suicidal?"

The old man laughed again. "Nothing so grandiose. This Assassin appearing once was a strange twist of fate. Something that could not have been predicted, but not an omen of the future. However… Now that he's appeared in two successive Holy Grail Wars..." he said solemnly, "how much of your innumerable fortune, Queen Medb, would you wager that he does not appear for a third? Would you wager your continued existence? Would you gamble the total annihilation of your soul on such a fact? If there was even the slightest hint of a possibility that you could be utterly unmade, is that a risk you would ever take?"

She frowned. "I guess I wouldn't, no."

The old man nodded, looking pleased. "And that is why I have spent the last ten years preparing for the worst case scenario. I have tried to explain the principle to my grandson on numerous occasions, and he has never been able to wrap his mind around it."

Medb snorted. The pillow's seams started to unravel, and she pulled at the threads. "I'm shocked."

He chuckled. "Indeed." Not even the idiot's family liked him.

The pillow made a satisfying noise as it broke apart in her hands. "So what do you need for the ritual? Because if we're doing it, it has to be soon. If there Servants have started returning to the Grail, it could fuck things up."

"We will need three things," the old man sighed as he leaned back with another creak. "First: a location of some power. I have spent many lifetimes in this city, and I have done my research. I believe that of the ley lines we have discussed, the one that is most viable is the abandoned theater. There is lingering power there, from the last War. That is where the last Grail manifested before it was moved, after all."

Medb nodded, then tossed the mangled pillow aside. "Alright."

He held up a second finger. "Power. The ritual will require a tremendous amount of magical energy to perform. This will likely not be a problem; there are a lot of people in that area, and we will be able to afford a little collateral damage. Even that might not be enough, but you remember the magical instabilities that I spoke of, yes?"

"Of course," she said haughtily. "The flow of mana in the world has been disturbed, and its epicenter is here in Fuyuki."

"A symptom of something greater. The rules are not what they should be," the old man whispered. "The impossible is within our grasp."

It didn't really make much sense to her, but she nodded again. "And the third?"

"The third…" He smiled warmly, the way a doting grandfather might gaze upon his beloved granddaughter. "The third is the piece that I will require your help securing, if you are willing to lower yourself for one such as I."

Medb waved a casually dismissive hand. "I wouldn't be doing it for you. If you win the War, I win the War. But you know that already."

"Of course, of course." The old man's expression didn't change. "The final piece I require. Within the only western church within the Fuyuki City limits, there is a priest by the name of Kirei Kotomine. You can hurt him as badly as you like, but I need him alive." The old man lowered his head respectfully. "Tomorrow night, bring me the priest, my Queen, and our victory will be assured. Bring me the priest, and I will ensure that all of your wishes will be granted."

* * *

_Love you all. Thanks for your continued readership and comments and support! c:_

_Next chapter: Groundwork_


	13. Preparation

_Blood dripped down the swordsman's blade, but none of it ever seemed to touch his hands. _

_What were this man's ideals? I didn't know. Or rather, I didn't understand them. _

_There was a duality to the swordsman. An eldritch, boiling sea of black hatred, churning and frothing and raging. It ate away at anything it touched, the seafloor beneath crumbling away, growing deeper with every eon that passed. _

_And there was the sky overhead, brighter than the sun could ever be, cloudless, that should have suffused his world with golden light. His hope and love and gratitude._

_Never did they meet._

_He killed without remorse. He killed brutally when necessary. He killed in private and he killed in public. Did he hate the men he killed? Did he feel anger toward them?_

_I don't think he did._

_I watched a man, bruised and bloody, his left hand clinging onto his wrist only by scraps of skin, scrambling for life, sobbing. The swordsman walked inexorably forward, executioner's greatsword in hand. _

"_Please," the crying man said. "I'll do better."_

_The swordsman didn't respond as he planted his boot on the man's chest and removed the head from its shoulders. Not even a moment's pause for the dead. He left a trail of bloody footprints behind him as he faded into the night._

_This was not an isolated incident. There is nothing about this murder that stood out to him. It only stands out in how little it stands out. It was one nondescript drop in a sea of blood. _

_The killing hung somewhere between the sea and the sky, suspended in nothing._

_And yet, for all that hatred, for all that turmoil, he never saw the death he brought in his quest as evil. Not really. He didn't consider himself a hero, either. He was barely a man; he was nothing more than a tool of something bigger. I couldn't understand him. I couldn't fathom the choices a person would have to make to come to the conclusion that the only way to make the world a better place is to do such monstrous things. The easy answer would have been to say he killed to quiet the black sea within him, but... it wasn't. I would have been lying to myself if I thought it was. (Because that's what it was, right? Evil?) It sickened me. It turned my stomach. I hated him, and I wanted to cry for him. _

_There was a moment that crystallized the swordsman into what he would become. A moment from which his path was irrevocably set. He couldn't remember where he was, nor why he was attacked. Cycles of hatred. Cycles of revenge. Cycles of blood. The shadows rose up in revolt, silent killers cloaked in the very thing he'd relied upon for so long. He fought, but he was not enough. He could remember the feeling of the knives entering his flesh. He could remember his blood spilling onto the stone. He could remember the poison coursing through his veins. The assassin, assassinated. He was not saved. After all that he had given, after all he taken taken away, the swordsman was cut down and left to die. His wounds were not healed. No great beam of light emerged from the sky to uplift him, to resurrect him. The killers had been thorough. And yet, he awoke, with injuries that should have killed him a dozen times over. _

_It was something he'd known for a long, long time, but only now was it made undeniable and therefore __**real**__: he was not allowed to die. _

_This was the moment when everything changed. The moment that he resolved to once and for all leave his true name and his face behind — to become more than mortal and less than human. If there had ever been a picture of a miracle on this Earth, it was a man with a slashed throat and chimera's venom dancing in his veins, burning with pain forevermore, walking tall in the noontime sun._

_I couldn't understand. If he did only evil in the name of his God, then why was he forced to stay?_

* * *

Assassin's voice came from behind her, breaking the silence she was working so hard to keep. "**And how has Archer's recovery progressed?"**

Rin jammed her arms into her jacket, worming her way into the sleeves like… like whatever the opposite of a snake shedding its skin was. "He's not at a hundred percent, but it's going faster than we expected. Last night was productive. He can fight."

"**He may have to. We do not know what awaits us at the temple."**

"I'm aware of that," she grumbled, buttoning up her front. "We don't have a choice. We need to know if there is a Master there or not."

"**I do not disagree."**

Shirou looked over from where he was chatting quietly with Sakura; she was laughing at some undoubtedly stupid thing he'd just said. "Oh, Tohsaka? Why are you getting dressed to go out too?"

_He just keeps surprising me. _She looked at him incredulously. "I'm coming with you? Is that really a question you need to ask?"

Sakura's smile faded, but Shirou's attention was on her at the moment. "We're going to my house because you're kicking us out."

"Yes," she said patiently, her forehead twitching. _No one should be allowed to be this stupid._

"So…" She could almost hear the little hamster spinning on its wheel in his brain. Squeaking obnoxiously.

Rin pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting the headache that had never actually left. "Assassin, can you explain to your Master why I would possibly be going back to his house with him, if we're not staying here?"

Assassin did not answer. She realized belatedly that she could no longer sense his presence.

"Useless piece of shit ghost," she growled through clenched teeth.

"Um," Sakura said hesitantly, wringing her hands. She was the only person Rin had ever met who _literally_ did that. "Tohsaka-senpai… Are you planning to stay over?"

Rin gestured exasperatedly at the suitcase full of clothes and supplies at her feet. "Really? You too?"

Sakura shrank away, and Shirou stepped forward. She wasn't sure if he was being protective, or if he just hadn't noticed that Sakura was doing the cringing thing. They were equally likely, in her opinion. "Everything we talked about still goes."

"Who do you think you're talking to?" She glared offended daggers at him, then stomped pointedly on the floor. "Archer!" she yelled. "We're leaving! Get up here!"

Archer, somewhere below her, replied by knocking on the ceiling, showing an absolute disregard for the sanctity of her property. Bastard.

Shirou shook his head. "I want to trust you, Tohsaka, but you and me need to agree to be allies." Sakura suddenly became very interested in tying her shoes, but Rin was pretty sure that she had just untied them herself so that she could look busy.

"We already-" She stopped, blinking at him. "Assassin didn't tell you that we _already had this conversation?"_

Shirou blinked. "No, Tohsaka—"

Laughter bubbled in her chest, and she crossed her arms. "Wow. _Wow. _Great rapport you two have got, huh? Lots of trust there."

"**We spoke."**

Rin almost jumped out of her skin, and the fact that Sakura made a strangled "eek" sort of sound didn't make her feel any more dignified. "Stop _doing_ that!"

"Thank you, Assassin," Shirou said pointedly. "What I _meant_ was that there's three of us right now, and we need to trust each other, and I don't want anyone trying to kill anyone else. We're not a bunch of cats someone threw in a bag."

Rin was too tired with this whole argument to put up a fight, so she nodded reluctantly. "Okay. Everything on the table."

"Alright," Shirou said.

"Cards on the table," Rin said. "I think you're an idiot."

Shirou sighed. "Okay, Tohsaka." The fact that he didn't fight back actually made her feel a little guilty, and that just made her more mad.

Fuming, she turned away. "Archer! Where the hell are you?"

Archer materialized beside her, planting a steady hand on her shoulder. "I'm ready to go." He jerked a thumb backward at Sakura and Shirou. "Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumb are ready to go. Seems like you're the one holding us up."

Shirou frowned. Sakura blinked, looking mystified.

"You're carrying it," she growled, scooping it off the ground and shoving it into Archer's chest. He grunted, and she halfway hoped she'd hit his battle wound. "Shirou, I might not be happy about including Little Miss Matou in our plans, but I'm not going back on my word. I'm not that kind of person. I said you and me are allies, so we're allies. I said I wouldn't touch Sakura, so she's safe. Am I speaking German right now?"

Shirou looked at her for a long moment, crossing his arms over his chest. "You know, you don't have to fight it."

She groaned. "Fight what?"

"Being a good person," he said earnestly. "You _are _a good person, Tohsaka. Even if you don't want to be."

_He's cloying_. But he was right; she _didn't_ want to be. It went against everything she'd been ever taught about magecraft. She refused to acknowledge it any further. "Now," she said in a way that hopefully brooked no argument, "Does anyone else have a problem they'd like to share?"

No one spoke. Sakura fidgeted, while Shirou just sort of looked vaguely grouchy.

"Good," Rin declared, marching out the door.

Behind her, she heard Sakura whisper to Shirou. "Do you think we'll get attacked?"

Shirou answered her by murmuring the worst possible thing he could have said, no doubt sealing their fate through sheer force of dramatic irony: "I'm sure we'll be fine. No one would possibly attack us in broad daylight."

They were all going to die, huh?

* * *

Nothing happened.

No Servants accosted them, no Masters ordered their deaths; there was nothing even so inconvenient as a missed pedestrian crossing. Sakura didn't know how to feel about that, but the fact that there was even a possibility that she might have relished a little trouble was enough to condemn her. Beside her, Senpai looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He thought he was being subtle with his concern, but she knew him too well for him to hide such a thing. It was sweet. She didn't deserve any such concern, but it was sweet.

They'd been walking in silence for the last ten minutes or so, their conversation fading away as Sakura's responses had become more and more monosyllabic, until they'd stopped altogether. Senpai had tried to keep it going at first, but he'd soon realized that it wasn't working, and he'd lapsed into a comfortable, if worried, silence.

Rin walked ahead of them, close enough to make it clear the three of them were all traveling together, but far enough away to put herself on a different level from the two of them. She was the leader, they the dutiful followers. Archer and Assassin were both in their spirit forms, keeping a careful eye out for any danger. Thus far, they hadn't said anything.

Rin was the one who broke the silence, speaking loudly enough to be heard without turning her head. "We're almost there, and I don't want to waste a lot of time before we go scouting."

Senpai opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him there. "Don't worry, Tohsaka-senpai. I won't make trouble." Speaking the words was hard, but it looked like Rin had heard her from the way her shoulders tensed a little. "I'll stay behind."

"I wasn't worried," she tossed off casually, still not turning. "You were staying behind either way, but I'm glad you're being smart about it."

Senpai's face darkened beside her. "Tohsaka, you-"

Sakura placed a gentle hand on his wrist. He stopped short, looking at her with confusion. She shook her head. "It's okay, Senpai. I'm not going to be much help with, um. All that stuff you have to do." She bit her lip hard before she could start rambling. If she talked too long, she'd panic herself, and that wasn't what he needed at all. He needed her to be steady and self-reliant, even if the idea of him going off and getting himself killed in some undoubtedly horrible way filled her with a kind of sinking dread she couldn't put words to. She _really_ needed to not think about that, so she calmly sectioned off the part of her mind that was trying to freak out about it, stuffed it into its own mental room, and locked the door.

She was sure Senpai saw none of that on her face, but apparently what she'd said was enough to make his lips twist into a pretzel, the way they did when she accidentally said something concerning. "I don't like the idea of leaving you alone," he said slowly.

"Too bad," Rin called back haughtily, but Senpai ignored her.

"The whole point of bringing you with us was to keep you safe, and-"

She withdrew her hand, but gave him the sunniest smile she could muster. He paused again, then gave her a tentative smile back. She didn't feel very sunny, but she'd gotten really good at faking it. "I'll be okay. I'll just clean up all the mess and cook you all something for when you come back. You won't even miss me."

Senpai rubbed the back of his neck. "But-"

She continued regardless, careful to keep her voice warm and soothing. "You won't be gone long, and no one is going to look for me there." Look for her… Nii-san and her grandfather would be looking for her, wouldn't they? Except… They'd be angry.

If they were angry, that usually meant that she got hurt, and she didn't think she'd ever done anything in her life that would make them as mad as what she was doing right this second, so it stood to reason that-

_You can't even imagine what they'll do,_ she thought, but that wasn't true.

She very much could imagine.

Her breath caught in her chest, just for a second, but long enough for Senpai to turn back to her. "Sakura?"

She shook her head, and hoped it didn't look as desperate as she felt. "I'm okay," she said in that same placid tone of voice, performatively wrapping her arms around herself. "I just got a little cold, is all." _Please believe that_. _I don't want to talk about-_

But before she could even finish the thought, he was shrugging out of his jacket. She blinked, trying to process what he was doing, then froze as he draped it over her shoulders. He stumbled, trying to stop a little too quickly, but he gave her a smile that she thought was a whole lot more genuine than hers had been. That made her feel a little guilty. "S-senpai?"

He shrugged, then turned and kept walking. "You're cold. What kind of guy would I be if I didn't give you my coat?" He didn't turn back to look at her, but she imagined the vaguely embarrassed look on his face. He loved to be a hero, but he always seemed to be a little uncomfortable whenever that was acknowledged.

She stared at his back, wide eyed, frozen like a deer in headlights. He'd never done this before. Granted, that was because she tried not to complain about such things, but… A touch of heat played on her cheeks, and she looked down at the ground as she slowly drew it around her, threading her delicate arms through the sleeves. It was big, and it was baggy, and it was dirty, but… It was warm. His body heat lingered, and for a moment she imagined being enveloped in his arms, before violently shoving that image away. _It would be based on a lie,_ she thought. _If he thinks you're good, it's only because you won't tell him who you really are. _She shoved her hands defiantly into the jacket's pockets, then jogged a little to catch up. "Thank you," she said quietly.

As she rejoined him, he glanced at her, then blinked; a kind of smile she'd never really seen on him before touched his lips. "I haven't had a chance to wash it, so uh. That probably wasn't the nicest thing I could have-"

"No," she protested, "it's very warm. Thank you."

He looked away again; she didn't think he even noticed the look on his face. _He's happy because you lied to him_, her thoughts continued. _You can't even be honest with the little things._ She kept the jacket anyway. She wasn't cold, so there wasn't really any justification for it that didn't come back to how selfish she was, but she didn't want to give it back. _It's making him happy_, she told herself firmly.

She tried not to feel guilty about the smile that he wore all the way home, and she almost succeeded.

Finally, they stood at Senpai's familiar gate, surrounded by broken sidewalk. The sight didn't fill her with the same panic it had the day before, but rather a kind of weighted melancholy. She'd wanted so badly to avoid this. Her mind retraced the familiar paths and lines of self-loathing, trapped in its comfortable rut, around and around.

"Okay," Rin said, pulling out a pocket watch and checking it. "If we want to get to Ryuudou Temple around noon, then we've got two hours before we need to leave. I don't care what we do until then, as long as we're ready to go when I say."

Senpai sighed with relief, and she smiled at him. The face he made was cute, and it helped ward off the sadness, just a little. "Oh, good," he said. "I don't think I've ever had to wear an outfit that was this ruined before. I need some new clothes."

"And another shower. Hey, wait a minute. You went shopping, right?" Rin asked, deadpan. "Why didn't you just… buy some more?"

"I didn't have a lot of money on me," Senpai protested, in a tone of voice that suggested the real reason was that he just hadn't thought of it. Sakura couldn't keep herself from a quiet giggle, and the look of abject betrayal on his face just made her laugh harder. He couldn't maintain the expression for long and quickly started laughing along with her. It eased the burden that was weighing her down more than she'd expected.

Rin looked at them like they were a couple of maniacs, then snorted. "Well, unless Lancer took a break from trying to kill you to go through and stab all your clothes, you should be good."

"I hope he didn't do that," Senpai said. "I don't think I'm going to be able to work my job for a while."

Sakura, feeling especially brave, leaned toward Rin conspiratorially. "Ms. Fujimura used to buy most of Senpai's clothes, and he's still grouchy about having to spend his own money."

Rin looked at her, wide-eyed. "You're kidding." The corner of her mouth ticked, but not in a way that belied imminent anger.

"Of course she is," Senpai mumbled, embarrassed, and jammed his hands into his pants pockets. Now it was Rin's turn to laugh along with Sakura, and she was surprised how natural it felt. Like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle snapping together in a perfect fit.

_Is this what our lives could have been instead? _She... liked this. She liked Rin, even if her own feelings were more complicated than she herself understood. Having the three of them together like this, joking and playing around and laughing… What if this could become their new normal? When all of this was over, could they all be friends? It was another selfish wish, because that was the only kind she ever had, but she forced herself to hold onto it.

Formless guilt tried to wrap itself around her waist, leaden weights of purposeless self-loathing fastened to her feet, but that laughter, for the moment at least, kept her buoyant.

* * *

"Hey, bossman."

Lancer's asshole Master did not respond, but he did quirk his head in Lancer's direction. Permission to speak, as if Lancer needed any such thing.

_Whap_. Lancer threw the rubber ball against the wall. It hit hard, bounced back onto the floor, and into Lancer's hand. _Whap. Whap._ "Do you believe in Hell?"

"An interesting question," Kirei murmured, and Lancer could hear the small smile on his lips. He leaned back as much as the stiff pew would allow, resting one of his arms along its top. There was an art to creating something that was just uncomfortable enough to be ever-present, he had explained once, and yet just comfortable enough that the people involved would not flee from the discomfort. Kirei was very proud of the pews. Just another way to show his parishioners his love, or something fucked up and stupid like that. "Do you ask because you feel something for the countless souls you have no doubt consigned there, or because you feel that this partnership is your own personal Hell?"

"Just answer the question," Lancer said, but it was mostly the second one. Everything about this arrangement sucked. A Master he couldn't stand, stolen from one who had seemed to have potential, jerked around, and forced to deal with his shittiest enemy on the battlefield without warning. What about this _wasn't_ specifically designed to torment him personally?

"Do I believe in the great cavern of fire and brimstone where sinners burn in the hands of an angry God?" Kirei shifted again. "Not as such. The common vision of Hell lacks originality, and if our heavenly Father exists, he is nothing if not… _creative."_

"_If?"_ Lancer asked incredulously. "Aren't you a priest? Isn't being all high and mighty about knowing this your _job?"_

"What sort of respectable priest does not think for himself?" Kirei retorted, that shitty smile still dancing in the words. "Free will is the gift of mortality, after all. In any event, God is not angry, and His torments are not so mundane as to be limited to the physical. Would He create misery to be so delightful if he did not enjoy it Himself?"

"That's kind of messed up," Lancer said idly. _Whap. Whap. _Kirei had given it to him as a jab, a ball for a hound, but Lancer had been determined to make him regret that decision.

"That is the world we live in." The pew creaked as Kirei stood. "It is not a kind place, nor is it a comfortable one. Consider: we live in a world of rules, you see. There must be punishments for transgression, or the rules have no meaning."

"What, like killing?" Lancer asked dryly.

Kirei chuckled. "The Ten Commandments exist, yes, but there are others as well. Greater rules than the personal. Is death good enough for one who would threaten the world? What about more than one? There are other worlds than these, after all. Those who threaten the balance will be punished, without exception, or no one would ever learn."

"But not by fire," Lancer said.

"No. Not by fire." Kirei was in full sermon mode, and Lancer hated to admit how well he delivered his lectures. "Any being will grow accustomed to pain, in time. Some will never break under its sting. Every being, however, has weak points. Things that _will_ break them. The angel of the abyss knows this, and can tailor his torments to each individual. Tell me, Lancer. Which do you fear more — an eternity of physical torment, or an eternity of endless, mindless _tedium_?"

Lancer didn't answer, uncomfortable with how correct the priest's implication was. "Don't you mean the Devil?"

"The difference is meaningless. If an entity named Satan exists, he is much an aspect of Our Father as the Archangel Gabriel, or Abaddon the Destroyer, or Kalqa'il the Guardian. He has many agents of balance, and to assume that He would allow such a fundamentally antithetical enemy to exist is foolishness."

"Is there a point to all of this?" Lancer couldn't really see how any of this related.

"You asked a question, Lancer, and I answered. Yes, I believe in Hell. I should like to understand it, someday." He just sounded so _smug _about _nothing._ "I simply do not believe it is limited to the deserving. Does that answer your question?"

Lancer snorted. "No such thing as justice, bossman."

Kirei laughed. "On that, I believe we can agree. Now, speaking of tedium..."

Lancer rolled his eyes. "You got a job for me? Because anything is better than throwing this stupid ball at your church."

"Another thing we can agree upon," Kirei said pointedly. "You recall Berserker and his Master?"

"The big brute and the creepy little girl, yeah," Lancer said. "They're pretty hard to forget." He'd scouted the pair of them out a few days before; his battle with Berserker had been little more than a skirmish, but he'd learned a lot from it. Like how scary powerful the big guy was.

"It is not time to engage them further, but I would like you to keep your eye on them." Kirei's voice was all business, now. "The girl, especially. She is vital to this war in more ways than you know, and we should be aware of her movements. Her patterns and her desires."

Lancer shrugged. "Alright. I can do that. You gonna stay safe, you bastard?" Not that he gave one single shit about Kirei's wellbeing, but it'd be a pain to have to find a third Master.

Kirei smiled. "Nothing in the Holy Grail War is safe, Lancer, but should I feel that I am in imminent danger, rest assured, I will call. Although…" He sighed heavily, and Lancer wanted to hit him even _before_ he said what he said next. "I do not know if I can rely on you, after that shameful display yesterday."

_Oh, you son of a bitch. _"Listen-" Lancer snarled, but Kirei interrupted smoothly.

"Yes, I am well aware of Rider's… charms. I had merely believed your willpower to be superior to hers." That mournful voice was like gasoline on the fire of Lancer's anger. He was playing a dangerous game. "I regret that I was incorrect. Perhaps you would merely get in the way, if an enemy Servant were to arrive. I've always wondered how I would fare—."

But Lancer was already gone. It was either that or stab him, and it really _would_ be inconvenient to find another Master.

* * *

_I'm going to be at Momocon this Saturday! If you're there and you see a Rin and Shirou couple cosplay carrying homemade Archer/Saber dolls, the Shirou might be me!_

_Again again again, thank you so much to everyone who reads and everyone who comments! C: __Y'all are the best!_

_Next chapter: What Sweet Dreams Are Made Of_


	14. What Sweet Dreams Are Made Of

Once Shirou had made sure that his guests were relatively settled in and didn't have any pressing needs to attend to, he'd muttered something about getting himself that shower and disappeared. That left Sakura and Rin sitting together across the table, feeling a little awkward.

Or, well, Rin was feeling a little awkward. If Sakura was uncomfortable — and she probably was — then she was hiding it much better. A clock ticked. Neither of them spoke, neither able to look the other in the eye.

The silence stretched for what felt like days. _What am I supposed to say to her? _Sakura was probably thinking the same things. Wondering if Rin was going to try to kill her again, or thinking about how much Rin must hate her. That… made her a little sad. She didn't hate Sakura. It was easier to pretend that she did, but… She couldn't. No matter how hard she tried.

The silence was like a physical thing pressing on Rin's eardrums.

This was agonizing. "I'm sorry I-" they both said at the same time, then stopped. "What were you going to say?" Rin asked, while Sakura frantically waved her hands and stuttered, "I-I didn't mean to interrupt!"

_What are we doing? I'm not a stuttering schoolgirl on a date. Stop acting like a fool,_ Rin thought dourly. Her cheeks burned, and she looked away. "I'm sorry I tried to kill you," she mumbled. _Ugh. Pathetic._

Sakura frowned, looking uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Tohsaka-senpai, but I couldn't hear you…" She seemed too nervous to be making fun of Rin, but pretending that she was made it a little easier. A touch of anger always helped her say what she needed to.

Rin crossed her arms over her chest, adamantly refusing to look directly at her— at Sakura. "I said, I'm sorry I wanted to convince Shirou to kill you."

"Oh," Sakura said softly. Rin chanced another glance, and saw her tracing a pattern on the table with her index finger. "It's okay."

"Is it?" she asked skeptically. She didn't know if she'd let bygones be bygones so quickly, not for something as cold as what Rin had tried to do, so she studied Sakura's face intently.

Sakura nodded, and Rin actually believed her. There was something guileless about that wide-eyed look of sincerity. _She looks like she belongs in a Ghibli movie. How does she do that? _"It is. I understand. I'm a Magus too, Tohsaka-senpai. I mean, I'm not as good as you are, but I think that part was probably the same for both of us. Our fath… I mean, Tokiomi was that kind of man."

The name sent a pang of… something through her. Emotions she could neither identify nor understand bouncing around her gut. "Ruthless?" Rin said offhandedly. _When was the last time I heard his name said out loud?_

Sakura nodded again. It was easier than verbal assent, Rin figured. Her feelings toward Tokiomi had to be even more complicated than Rin's own. Rin hadn't been the one who had been sold off like cattle.

"He was what his father made him," Rin said thoughtfully. "Who was what _his_ father made _him._ It's what being a Magus has always been. Selfish and… well, ruthless."

"And I'm what my grandfather made me," Sakura said with a sad smile.

"And that's why I'm not angry," Rin said seriously. Sakura recoiled, more out of surprise than anything else, Rin figured, but she made herself look into the other girl's eye so that she would know Rin meant it. "You said it yourself, Sakura. We're Magi. This is how we're supposed to live. Shirou doesn't understand that, because his father was… not an official Magus, but we do. We did what we thought we had to do."

"But I could have hurt you," Sakura protested.

_I've never met Zouken Matou, but I know enough to know that these aren't his words coming out of your mouth, Sakura. The fact that you feel guilt at all means he didn't change you too much from the little sister I had once. _Rin couldn't help the rueful smile that touched her lips. "And I wanted to hurt you. But we're both alive, right? So let's put it behind us. Water under the bridge."

"But-" Sakura started to protest again, but Rin shook her head firmly, and she quieted.

"Listen, if I have to keep thinking about it, it's just going to be putting more flab on my mind," she said. "I forgive you for coming to attack me if you forgive me for wanting to kill you, as another Master."

Sakura actually giggled a little, though Rin couldn't imagine what she'd said that was so funny. "Okay, Tohsaka-senpai. I forgive you."

They sat in silence for a few moments. This one felt less oppressive than the last.

"What I'm worried about," Rin said, "is Shirou. Like I said, I don't think he'll understand any of this. I don't regret what I did, but he'll never trust me again." It was… unpleasant how uncomfortable that thought was. _You're just using him, aren't you?_ That thought got harder and harder to take seriously every time she had it.

Sakura shook her head. "No, that's not true! Senpai won't ever understand, you're right about that. But," she said, and there was a warmth to her smile that Rin only ever saw when Sakura was near _him_. "He's a good person. He's… better than either of us. He'll forgive you, Tohsaka-senpai, because he wants to believe in people. Even if it might get him hurt, he always wants to see the best in others."

"That's stupid," Rin said, but there wasn't any fire in it.

Sakura seemed to pick up on that, because her delicate smile didn't falter. "I don't think so," she said softly. "I think it's admirable. Having faith in people is hard, but he does it so easily."

It was then that Rin consciously noticed that Sakura was still wearing Shirou's ratty, torn, dirty jacket. It hung loose on her arms and around her waist, making her look even younger and more fragile than she was, and the black of the material cast her skin in an even paler light. And yet… Whether she really remembered it was there or not, she seemed to be drawing strength from it. Rin didn't have the heart to draw attention to how nasty it was. "You really do care about him, don't you?" Rin asked wonderingly.

With a tiny nod, Sakura's smile grew wistful. "I do. Senpai is a good man." Her gaze fixed on a point in the air just over Rin's shoulder. Rin wondered if she'd gone somewhere else.

_Yeah, if you understood what I was asking, I'll eat my pendant. _"He cares about you too, you know." She looked away, feeling weirdly bashful.

Sakura blinked.

"It's not like I was ever close to him or anything before this, but I didn't think he could _get_ as angry as he did when he thought you were in danger." She rested her hand on her chin, idly watching the direction Shirou had left. "Not even when people wanted to kill him."

"I don't know why he'd worry about me so much," Sakura mumbled, but she sounded pleased.

Rin wondered what it would feel like to have someone try so hard to protect you, for no other reason than that they wanted to. It wasn't a painful thought, nor a melancholic one. It was simply an idle curiosity. "I think you probably do know," she said evenly. "You're just afraid to admit it."

"Tohsaka-senpai, I don't know what that means either," Sakura said, and she didn't sound like she was feigning her confusion. "Afraid to admit what?"

Rin laughed softly, glancing back at her wide-eyed counterpart. "Even a pair as thick-headed as you two will figure it out eventually."

Sakura looked so innocently puzzled that Rin had to cover her own mouth to stifle further laughter.

* * *

A man's bath was supposed to be his sanctuary. When you locked the door and drew the water and laid back, the outside world was supposed to leave you be for a little while; it was a chance to relax and unwind, completely alone in a way you couldn't usually find.

"**Contractor."**

Apparently, that didn't apply to Servants.

Assassin's voice came just as Shirou had allowed his eyes to drift closed, jolting him out of what had promised to be a peaceful reprieve. He groaned, moving to cover himself as he sat up. "Why are you doing this to me? Were baths not private where you come from? Because when we lock the door, that's usually what we want."

"**I cannot see thee. Thy dignity remains intact."**

Shirou had the sudden, visceral image of Assassin hunched over in the corner of the bathroom, sheepishly covering his eyes with his massive gauntleted hands. That probably wasn't what Assassin was _actually_ doing, but picturing it defused some of his irritation. "You didn't answer my question."

"**We must speak in private. Thy compatriots are speaking in the main room."**

"My…." Shirou shook his head. "They're getting along, right? Nobody's trying to kill each other?" _This is surreal._

"**They were sitting in silence when I left them. I did not sense any hostile intent."**

"Oh, well, that's good," Shirou said. It really was a genuine relief. He'd been worried about leaving them alone together, but it sounded like things were fine, if a little awkward.

"**I must speak to thee regarding Sakura Matou."**

"Again?" Shirou couldn't keep the exasperation from his voice. "I thought we settled this. You're not touching her."

"**I come to convince thee not. As I said, I do not believe thee to be capable of such a choice."**

Shirou sank down into the water, glowering in the voice's direction. He couldn't imagine what would be so important, if not that. "Then why?"

"**I come to acknowledge the complexity of the situation. When feelings such as thine are involved, clear-headed judgement becomes even more difficult. I have long since left my humanity behind, but I am not so far removed from what I once was that I no longer understand human nature."**

"And what does that mean?" That was a lot of complicated words, but it sounded like a roundabout way of calling him a fool, and he had enough of that from Rin and Archer.

What Assassin said rocked him back in surprise; he never would have thought Assassin capable of such humility. "**It means that I apologize for my callousness," **he said simply. "**It was not the correct way to reach thee; I underestimated the bond that Sakura Matou and thee share."**

_Did Assassin just... apologize to me? _Shirou thought blankly. He was having a hard time wrapping his mind around that one. "Does that mean that you don't want to kill her anymore?"

Assassin sighed, and it was a more tired sound than Shirou had yet heard from his Servant. "**I do not relish death, Contractor. I do not kill because I enjoy it, nor do I kill for petty dislike."**

"Then what?" Shirou asked, leaning over the side of the tub, crossing his arms under his chin on the rim. "What does that leave?"

"**I do not believe Sakura Matou is a bad person. I would like thee to understand this. She does not deserve punishment."**

"Okay," Shirou said, not really understanding where this was going, but feeling worry curl around his stomach anyway.

"**She deserves mercy,"** Assassin said, and while Shirou would never call that booming voice _gentle_, there was a melancholy to it that was also very new. "**This… darkness within her. Since our conversation, I have spent a great deal of time gazing into it. It is not of Sakura Matou."**

"That's good, right?" It was a little bit of a relief to hear, even if he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"**It is a cancer," **Assassin said slowly. Shirou had the sense that the Servant was doing his best to be tactful, something that didn't seem to come naturally. "**Though a more correct analogy might be a kind of dormant plague, or an amalgamation of untethered curses. It will devour her, and when she is consumed, she will be something that is no longer the Sakura Matou that thee knows. When that happens, Contractor, she will not be the only one who faces a cruel death from its hands. I do not know the identity of this agent of rot, but I sense its malevolence. It will use her to kill and destroy on as grand a scale as it can manage."**

"So you think killing her is a mercy?" Shirou asked bitterly. His vision wavered slightly; lightheaded with heat from the bath and anger and fear. "You think that she needs to die for the good of the many."

"**I will not celebrate her death. I will not consider it a great victory, nor would I expect thou to see it as such. But I believe that her early death would save a great many lives."**

"That's bullshit," Shirou said quietly. There was silence in the bathroom for a long few seconds, save for the quiet drip of water from the leaky faucet. "Assassin, I respect you. I don't understand you, but I think you're a good person, deep down, and I don't think you're lying to me. But that's bullshit."

The silence stretched painfully.

"You're telling me there's a rot in her. You're telling me that she'll kill people. But you can't tell me what it is, or _how_ it will kill people, or even how you _know_." Rage bubbled deep in his chest, but he kept his voice as level as possible. Assassin could see that, he was sure. "You want me to take on _faith_ that my best friend is going to… what, self-destruct?"

"**Faith-"**

"I heard your speech, Assassin," he said, forcing himself to ignore the cold fear that he was overstepping himself in a way that would soon be bad for his health, "and I know what you're going to say. Yeah, you're right, faith _is_ important. And I _do_ have faith. I have faith in _her._" He kept going, barreling forward so that the fear wouldn't catch him. "She won't let herself hurt anyone. She would never do that. But if this thing is so bad that you think killing her would be saving her, then fine. I'm sure you're right, if it gets to that point. But I think you've been an assassin for so long that you've forgotten that there are other ways than killing people to help someone. You said yourself that you don't know much about magic. That's fine, I don't either! But if neither of us do, then that's something we should…" He grasped for words, running out of steam. "Should look into. Rin's here, and she's an _amazing_ Magus! We could ask her for help! We can't kill her without _trying_ to find a way to save her, Assassin. We can't. I won't let you." He was breathing heavily; had he really gotten that heated?

More to the point, was Assassin about to cut his head off? He didn't know if he could use a Command Seal in time to stop that from happening.

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

"**You are very different from the last man I called Contractor," **Assassin said in a neutral voice.

Shirou sighed, sinking down until his face was all that was above water. Assassin's voice caused a strange vibration underwater. "I'm sorry I'm not the Master you want me to be, but I won't compromise like that. Even if it wasn't Sakura we were talking about, I wouldn't. Not even as a mercy**. **Besides, I thought we settled this."

"**The circumstances have changed."**

"Oh, really," Shirou mumbled. "How did they change?"

"**When Sakura Matou arrived at the Tohsaka estate yesterday, the darkness was a stain on her soul, and nothing more," **Assassin said. "**As I observed her on the journey here, I began to notice something more. There was movement, almost imperceptible to even my senses, that I do not believe was present before."**

Shirou grit his teeth, but it was fear more than anger that had seized him. "And what does that mean?"

"**The dreaming eye twitches, though the body knows not what it sees. The sleeper stirs. Though it has not yet come to consciousness, the darkness has begun to awaken. Whatever ends of savage destruction are encoded in its nature… Contractor. The fuse has been lit."**

* * *

There was half an hour until Rin and Senpai had to leave, and the three of them each sat on a different side of the table. Senpai had made tea and dug out a ratty old deck of cards, declaring that even though they were at war, they needed to be able to relax too. Sakura had smiled and gone along with him, but Rin had taken more convincing.

"Come on, Tohsaka," Senpai had said, shuffling the deck more deftly than Sakura had ever seen him do before. "Is fighting and killing the only thing you want to think about? Doesn't that get boring?"

Now they were playing Old Maid, because it turned out Rin didn't actually know very many card games, and they didn't have the time to teach her something more complicated. The game wasn't the point; Sakura understood that. This was about bonding between allies.

"I don't know about the name," Rin grumbled, taking a card from Sakura and groaning when it didn't make a pair with any of the ones in her hand. "What's wrong with being an old maid?"

"Well," Sakura said with a smile. "If a Magi is an old maid, I suppose they wouldn't have anyone to pass their magic crest to, and their bloodline would fade."

Rin made a "hmmm" sound as she offered her hand to Senpai.

"I don't think Magi invented this game," he said doubtfully, setting a pair of threes face-up on the table. "I think it's just a name."

"Besides," Sakura said. "You won't be an old maid, Tohsaka-senpai. I'm sure soon you'll be fighting suitors off with a broom." She took a careful sip of her steaming tea and sighed contentedly. It was easy to pretend this was normal, even if so many things pointed clearly to it being anything but.

"I already am," she said with a shrug. "It was a hypothetical objection."

"Tohsaka, you have suitors?" Senpai asked. "Is that normal for Magi?"

Rin nodded. "It's very normal. As the head of such a prestigious family with a powerful magic crest, it would be considered a great honor for any family to have a second son or daughter join our bloodline to theirs."

Senpai shook his head as Sakura took a card. "Daughter? I thought you had to be able to have a kid to pass down the crest or whatever."

Sakura looked away, her face getting warm, while Rin burst into laughter. "Really, Shirou? We're _Magi_. There are a lot of ways to make that kind of thing happen."

Senpai blinked, confused, and Sakura couldn't quite suppress the giggle that resulted. "Senpai," she said by way of rescue, "how are you feeling? You seem more energetic today."

He took a second to respond, because rapid changes in subjects always seemed to confuse him a little. It was kind of cute how he needed to change gears like that. "Yeah, I'm feeling a lot better," he said, flexing his arm to demonstrate. She smiled, and he grinned back. "I haven't had to use Assassin in a while, so I think I'm recovering."

"I'm glad," she said, flexing her own arm in return, skinny and weak though it was. "You seemed like you were getting sick, so I'm glad you're healing."

At the word "sick," something in his expression changed. A distant cloud passing over the sun, or something like it. Not enough to block it out completely, but enough to cast a shadow. A moment later, it was gone, but it lingered in her memory. "Nah, I'm not sick," he said nonchalantly. The order had passed to him while they were flexing like dummies, and he took another card. "It's just exhausting, you know? It kind of feels like how you feel after you run too many miles."

"That could also be all the running we did," Rin said blandly.

"That's true," he replied with a nod. "We did run a lot. I guess I'm just healing."

Worry began to flourish in her heart, and she forced it down. There would be time for worry later, she thought. She didn't want to ruin this. She desperately did not want to ruin this. "I don't run a lot, but I feel that way when I spend too long shooting," she said, wiggling her arm to demonstrate. "Do you feel rubbery, Senpai?"

"Kind of, yeah," he said. "Maybe it's the same principle?"

"Speaking of which," Rin said, "I think I've figured out a way to boost your magical capacity. It won't be much more than a stopgap, but if you have more to give, it might reduce the pain, or even buy you time without pain." She took a card and groaned. Another card that wasn't a pair.

Senpai was holding the joker. Sakura had figured out how to tell fairly early. Since the cards were so old and beaten up, the joker card had a tiny speck of dust in the corner, so she could pick it out pretty easily. She didn't think anyone else had noticed. The problem with this game was that in Old Maid, there wasn't really a winner. There was just a person, stuck with the card no one wants at the end, who loses. She tried her hardest not to see that as a metaphor, but it was something that itched at the back of her mind.

When her turn came, she took the joker.

"Oh, that's great, Tohsaka," Senpai said brightly, suddenly distracted. "Is that something we can do now?"

She shook her head. "Nah, I've still got a couple preparations I need to make. We'll get that done tonight, okay?"

"Um, Tohsaka-senpai," Sakura said timidly. "What kind of thing are you planning?"

"Don't make it sound so sinister." Rin seemed like half her brain was thinking about something else entirely, and Sakura wondered what it was that was so much more important. _That's not fair,_ she chided herself. "Basically, I think Shirou's switch is busted, so we're going to jumpstart it."

Senpai was back to looking confused, and it was so cute that Sakura had a sudden, overwhelming urge to touch his cheek. She valiantly resisted.

"What's a switch? Like a light switch?"

"No, it's-" Rin stopped with a sigh. "Wow, you really didn't learn anything about magic other than how to kill yourself with it, huh? Your teacher keeps finding new and impressive new ways to disappoint me."

"Hey-" Senpai started, but Rin didn't give him a chance.

"So your technique sucks because you're trying to create a magic circuit from scratch every time you do magic. That's like tearing all the muscles in your arm at once to try to get stronger, and it's a miracle that you haven't burned yourself out doing it." She tapped the table with one finger. "You're supposed to… toggle them on and off, basically, and do do that you need to have something that we call a switch."

"Only someone with a switch is capable of magic," Sakura added. Rin looked a little grouchy at being interrupted, but Sakura defused her irritation with a gentle smile. "It's what makes a person a mage or not."

"Right," Rin said. "Anyway, the point is, you need to be able to open your circuits enough to be able to supply Assassin. As it is right now, it's like when you block most of a hose, and what comes out is messy and sprays all over the place. You already don't have enough to give, but that makes the system especially inefficient, which makes Assassin's physical form try to draw even more out. It's a feedback loop, every time he manifests."

Senpai looked like they were speaking Greek. "So if I have this switch thing, I'll be able to be a real Master?"

Rin sighed again. "You already are a real Master. But it'll help you to not be so incompetent and useless. Assassin should be able to fight a little bit, at least."

"Oh," Senpai said. "That's good."

"But I've never heard of opening one manually," Sakura said. "How are you going to do that?"

Rin smirked. "I've got an idea or two, but like I said, I need more prep time. It's been done before, but it usually needs to be tailored to the person being treated."

"Rin," Archer's voice said, materializing behind his master. "I hate to interrupt when you're trying to scare Shirou, but it's no fun if he's too thick to be afraid. Also, it's time to leave."

"Go to hell," Senpai mumbled. Sakura patted his arm, sympathetic.

She didn't know how to feel about Archer. Since she'd arrived at Rin's house the day before, Archer had mostly made a big show of ignoring her presence. Assassin did a similar thing, rarely speaking in her presence at all, but he wasn't so… pointed about it. Sakura wasn't sure how to take that, but it was probably disapproval at her involvement. She suspected Archer had probably wanted her dead, too.

The list of people for whom that was true was getting pretty long.

The pocketwatch's chain jingled as Rin dug it out of her pocket. "Alright," she said once she'd had a moment to check it, "Archer's right. If we leave now, we should get there right around midday. You ready, Shirou?"

Senpai tossed his cards down on the table, face up. "Yeah," he said, his face set into something determined and serious. "I am. Assassin?"

"**I am ready to depart."**

Sakura jumped every time he spoke, and it was getting embarrassing.

Rin nodded, then pushed herself to her feet and walked out the door without another word, Archer on her heels. Senpai stood as well, then held out his hand. Sakura swallowed nervously. The lead weights were back in her gut, and she wasn't so sure she'd stay buoyant for long. Cautiously, she placed her hand in his, and he pulled her to her feet.

Sakura didn't break the contact. His hand was big and rough and strong; hers was so small and smooth, with only the callouses that regular archery practice had given her. It disappeared into his. Her mind was deliberately blank, because at the moment anything that counted as a real thought would probably hurt, so she didn't let herself have any. Senpai's fingers slackened, expecting her to let go.

She didn't.

He frowned at her, and she wanted to flinch, but she knew that look. It wasn't anger, and it wasn't discomfort. It was concern. He was worried about her. She should let go now, so that he would know that she was okay, and he'd go back to smiling.

She didn't.

"Sakura?" he said softly. Her eyes fastened to his, and something that wasn't entirely fear sent tingles through her fingertips. Something heavy weighed his face down, making him look older than he was. Her heart ached with it, and it ached with the knowledge that whatever was hurting him, it was probably her.

"Senpai…?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

His mouth opened, but he didn't seem to know how to say whatever he was thinking, so he closed it again. His eyes slid away from her, like he couldn't bear to look at her, then met hers again. A smile overtook him with eyes full to bursting with worry, and before she could even think to smile back, he'd wrapped his arms around her in a bone-crushing hug. At first, her only response was a startled squeak and a rigid body, her mind now blank for an entirely different reason. Then, slowly, haltingly, ever so gingerly, she touched his arms; as hard as he was hugging her, his lean muscle had always suggested that he could break her in two, if he wanted. _But he never would,_ she thought distantly, and then her arms were around him, too, as though her hands had been drawn to his back by something as inexorable as magnetism on iron.

She didn't know how long they stood like that; her sense of time had shorted out around the same moment that her ability to form a coherent thought had. Shirou whispered so quietly that even like this, with her face buried in his chest, she could barely make out the words. It sounded something like, "I won't let it change you," and she couldn't begin to fathom what he meant by that, especially compromised as she was. The Grail War? He wouldn't let the Grail War change her? But then she felt his scratchy blue-and-white shirt on her cheek, and her eyes closed, and she let his warmth envelop her again.

_Is this what it feels like to be safe…?_

The thought was puzzling and obvious at the same time; but she didn't stop to question it. She didn't want this to end, and she wasn't even thinking about how selfish that must be. That was a marvel in itself.

When he pulled back, it was all at once, like she'd given him a particularly nasty static shock. She couldn't help but take a nervous step back, startled again by his sudden movement, pressing her hands to the center of her chest. She wondered, dazedly, if her own cheeks were as red as his were.

"Sorry," he mumbled, rubbing awkwardly at his hair as though she'd somehow messed it up. "I don't know why I…"

"I-it's okay!" she stammered, not able to meet his eyes any more than he could hers. "I don't um, it was okay, I'm okay." _He hugged the words out of me,_ she thought, and had to force away the urge to laugh.

Neither of them knew what to do. Neither of them knew what to say.

"Um," Sakura said, still not looking at him. "You should probably, uh, Tohsaka-senpai might get mad if you take too long…"

Senpai nodded vigorously, and stepped past her to walk to the door. Sakura's broken mind tried to contextualize what had just happened as she followed him out the door, but that was proving to be much harder than it should have been. In all the time they'd been friends, she'd hugged him maybe twice; she didn't think he'd ever hugged _her_ first.

What did that mean?

And even if it was tempered by dread… why had it made her so happy?

_You really do care about him, don't you? _Rin asked again in her head.

_I do,_ she'd said.

Oh.

Oh, no.

* * *

_I had a blast at Momocon this weekend! I spent way too much money on posters and a Jalter nendoroid and a Sakura keychain, which seemed to be literally the only piece of Sakura merch on the entire floor, and other various assorted garbage that I love._

_Thanks for reading and reviewing and sharing! c:_

_Next chapter: Noble Phantom_


	15. Noble Phantom

Minutes later, the glow of the moment had faded, and Sakura tried to stand strong as the other two Masters both gazed intently at her. Her stomach churned and roared; confusing swaths of emotion painting themselves across her inner landscape like some kind of impressionist nightmare. Senpai put a hand on her shoulder, and because she was stupid and weak, her breath caught again. "We'll be back soon," he said softly.

"Don't leave," Tohsaka commanded sternly, as though Sakura were a particularly stupid dog.

"Just take it easy, okay?" He continued with bright, earnest eyes. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to." Somehow, seeing him like this was worse than fear would have been. He didn't understand what he was doing. He didn't understand that he was throwing himself right into danger's toothy maw.

_Please don't go._

"Don't let anyone other than us in," Tohsaka went on. Whatever rapport they'd worked out apparently didn't apply to Grail War business. Sakura was back to being treated like a child who was determined to put her hand on the hot stove. "I don't want to come back to an ambush because you let someone in the front door."

Sakura just nodded silently, eyes fixed firmly onto the ground. "Please be safe."

_Please stay with me._

Senpai blinked, then fixed her with a brilliant grin. "Of course I'll be safe. We'll be back soon." It was like he didn't even know that he wasn't just popping down to the grocery store. Had he even considered what kind of thing he was trying to _find_? What would happen if he found it? She wanted to tell him, to make him understand that he _should_ be afraid — but to say it would be to make it real.

She'd rather think about him coming home safe. She'd rather…She didn't know. _What exactly would you rather do? _The question hovered in front of her, begging to be answered. She put it off a little longer.

(No longer buoyant, she slipped under the surface.)

Senpai and Rin lingered for a few moments, bickering about meaningless things, then turned and started walking. Sakura stood at the gate, hands clasped before her so tightly her knuckles ached, and watched them go. They fought, but not unhappily. It was a kind of getting along, she thought, even if it was one she didn't really understand.

Something tugged at her chest, a thickening of presence, and she tensed. "Assassin? Are you… are you here?"

There was no response, but the tug became a heaviness. Was that him? Or was that just her own fear?

"Take care of him, okay?" She said, feeling a little silly at talking to the empty air. She didn't even know if Senpai's Servant was there. "Don't let him get hurt. Please." Her voice broke, and she closed her eyes so tightly she saw stars. For a moment, she felt his arms around her once more, and she shivered in the cold. _I won't let it change you. _"He's all I have," she said, her voice so quiet even she could barely hear it, shame filling her at her own words. He couldn't hold her again if he was… _Don't think it._

Silence.

He wasn't here. She was alone. The pull faded into nothing, and the only weight left in her chest was the one she lived with every day of her life. So she had probably imagined it.

She was so stupid, wasn't she? For all of this. For everything she'd done and everything she'd let happen and everything she assumed. Stupid, stupid Sakura.

Rin and Senpai were almost out of sight when she realized she was still wearing the jacket. "Senpai!" she called, willing her voice not to break. It didn't, but if Senpai had heard, he was ignoring her.

He… he probably wasn't ignoring her, right? Of course not. But...

The thought didn't take the sting out of being left alone. Not just stupid, was she? Worse than stupid. Useless. _Worthless_. It shouldn't feel like a fresh punch to the throat. It shouldn't make her want to cry. After all, had she ever been anything else? A dog didn't cry because it was a dog.

Sakura drew the coat tighter around herself, tried to tell herself that the warmth it gave her was his, and went inside.

* * *

"Oh yeah," Rin said mysteriously, gazing up at the forested hill that hid Ryuudou Temple from view. "There's definitely something super cursed going on over there."

Shirou blinked, straining his atrophied magical senses to try to sense any of what she was talking about. A breeze ruffled his hair, just a touch chillier than he was entirely comfortable with. A few birds sang in the distance. A child yelled somewhere distantly to his left, and off to his right, a car horn honked. Nothing that he would really describe as 'cursed'. Still, he put a grim look on his face, as if he could tell something was wrong without being told. It seemed like the right thing to do. "What is it, do you think?"

"The energy flow," Rin said simply. She pointed to a few different points in the empty air. "There, there… Over there, too. Rivers of mana." She pressed a thoughtful fist to her chin, tapping her lips with it. "They're like… power lines. Mana is getting pulled from somewhere and funneled into the temple."

"Pulled from what?" Shirou asked. "You mentioned a leyline, right? Shouldn't that be more than enough power for whatever's going on there?" He didn't know much about magic, but leylines were a fairly simple concept. They were places of power, and with some doing, a Magus could pull from them like a battery.

"Hmm." Rin narrowed her eyes, gaze fixed onto a distant point in the air. "It would be for most Magi. It's difficult to harness the full power of a leyline, even without this extra supplementation, which means…" She sighed heavily. "We have two possibilities. Either the Master there is incompetent and wasteful, or…"

Shirou didn't like where this was going. "Or?"

She gave him a serious look. "Or it's a Caster-class Servant we're dealing with." She paused, a thoughtful shadow passing over her expression. "Or both? It could be both."

Trying again to feel what she was describing, Shirou glanced upwards. He didn't feel anything in particular. The forest just seemed peaceful to him. "We'd have to deal with them anyway, right? Besides, you're a pretty good Magus, right, Tohsaka? How much better could this Caster be?"

Rin rubbed her eyes tiredly after shooting him a particularly pointed glare. "You train a lot, so you're pretty strong, right? How much stronger than you could Berserker be?"

He grimaced. "Point taken." His body still hurt from that encounter, and he would not soon forget the raw power that had been pointed firmly in their direction.

It didn't help that his mind kept wandering. He was trying to keep up, but he felt like he was juggling quite a few balls at once; there was a lot he was trying to work out in his head. A lot to understand. The Holy Grail was evil, and had to be destroyed, according to his Servant, who didn't really seem like the lying sort. Sakura was being… he didn't really know what. Menaced by some strange darkness. Assassin carried cryptic portents of the future. It would soon be time to discuss all of that with Rin, but frankly, he thought it would all be much more productive if he waited until she had cooled off a little first.

_Hey, by the way, _he imagined saying to Rin where they stood, _the thing you've been working your whole life to get is a lie, and we have to destroy it. Also, Sakura has a weird magic disease we don't understand, and we need to take time out of our busy schedule to figure it out. This is more important than what we're doing._

_What the hell is wrong with you? _The Rin in his head asked him, and then turned him into a frog.

They weren't going to have their hands on the Grail in the next few minutes, after all. It could wait.

Rin closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Archer? Assassin? You guys here?"

"I'm listening," Archer said, at the same time Assassin intoned, "**I am present."**

Rin glanced up at the general direction of the voices. "What's your read?"

"The boundary field is incredibly strong," Archer said calmly. "I might be able to break through with my Independant Action, but it'd leave me weaker." _Than I already am_, he left unsaid. "And I wouldn't be receiving much of your mana while I was in there. Not to mention that it would definitely set off an alarm. If that _is_ Caster up there, we can assume they're going to be ready to respond quickly."

"**Normally, I would be able to do the same," **Assassin continued, "**but with our energy flow as it is, I do not have the excess energy to sustain myself. I may in essence shut down the moment our connection is weakened. **

"Sorry," Shirou muttered.

Assassin didn't dignify that with an answer. "**There is but a single point of weakness. The main entrance has been left almost unfortified. This is no doubt intentional, as the main entrance greatly favors the defender. The only route in is a long, narrow staircase; an attacking force would be made to proceed in single file. The anti-Servant field lines the stairs, as well; even should we pass the entrance unimpeded, Archer and I will not be able to deviate from the steps."**

Archer took over. "If we want to take a look around, though, the staircase is our only real option. Anything else leaves us wide open to a magical counterattack, if the strength of the boundary field doesn't do Caster's job for them."

This all seemed like… a lot. Shirou raised a hand tentatively. "If we know that Caster is here, don't we have what we came for? We've identified the Servant at the temple. This was never going to be an assault."

"**There is vital information we still do not possess," **Assassin responded. Shirou hadn't known Assassin very long, but he got the feeling that Assassin was enjoying lecturing him almost as much as Rin had. Not for the first time, he wondered how long it had been since Assassin had talked to _anyone._ "**The fact that the Servant in question is Caster has **_**not**_ **been confirmed, as the evidence is mainly circumstantial. Additionally, we do not know the identity of the Master, nor do we know the identity of the Caster; let alone what their Noble Phantasm might be. If we can learn any of those things, our chances of success increase drastically."**

"Assassin's right," Rin concurred. "We need to know as much as we can. Archer?"

Archer shrugged. "I'm not crazy about this," he said, "but I don't think it'll be a repeat of what happened with Berserker. My magic resistance is fairly high. I'll take point. Shirou will follow behind me, and Rin will cover our backs."

Rin nodded. "I can do that."

Shirou wasn't sure this was a good idea, but he didn't exactly have a better one. They were right; this was likely the best chance they'd have to gather information with the element of surprise. "Hey, Assassin?"

"**Yes, Contractor?"**

"Just… in case things go really wrong," he said, trying very hard to keep the nervous edge out of his voice. "I'd like you to stay in spirit form if you think Rin and Archer and I can handle it, but…" He took a deep breath. "If things start looking very bad. You have my permission to fight." The tips of his fingers tingled with phantom pain, and he shivered.

"**I needed no such thing, but I shall abide by thine wishes,"** Assassin intoned. "**I would like to judge thy capabilities, in any event."**

Shirou laughed a little derisively. "I don't have many of those." What was he going to do? Strengthen a stick at the enemy? "If I fight, I'll get my ass kicked."

"**Then the war is already lost,"** Assassin said. "**Perhaps thou should reconsider thy position."**

Shirou sighed, picked up a nearby branch, and began the long, arduous process of strengthening it into something resembling a weapon.

* * *

They stood at the gate, the seemingly endless staircase yawning before them like the jaws of some unimaginably vast creature, waiting for its next meal. This close, even Shirou had begun to feel _something_, though he couldn't identify _what_, past a sense of unease and the raising of the hair on the back of his neck. Sweat dripped down his cheek, and he rubbed at it with his sleeve. (Tohsaka hadn't said anything about his pathetic magical performance a few moments ago, but she'd watched every moment.) He wasn't unathletic, but the events from the day before left his body feeling like a wet kitten.

Archer had taken physical form, the familiar black-and-white swords gripped tightly in his hands. He looked tense, the way he had before the fight the previous morning, and all the snide humor had gone out of him. Rin's lips were moving soundlessly, doubtlessly preparing some spell to be unleashed at the first sign of trouble.

None of them were particularly thrilled about entering. No one seemed to want to make the first move. "Are we doing this?" Shirou finally asked.

Rin jumped, then looked grumpy. Archer shot him a sideways look, filled to the brim with disdain. "This is delicate. Rin needs to make sure we're prepared for the boundary field. It could be dangerous."

As if on cue, Rin slowly extended a hand, and a gentle pulse of power pressed forward, breaking on the boundary like water against a dam. She closed her eyes, muttering, and the energy formed a loop that she continued feeding power into. The circle turned lazily, then expanded until it was wide enough for a person to step though. Carefully, she lowered a hand, breathing just a little harder. "There. We should be able to pass through safely. Like Archer said, it's weak here, but bypassing even a flimsy field like this is almost impossible."

Without further conversation, Archer passed through the portal, careful not to touch the edges. He didn't react otherwise, and he didn't burst into flames, so Shirou followed.

As his body moved through, as he passed through the magic film, pins and needles shot through him, as though every cell in him had fallen asleep; that was bearable, though. Unpleasant, but a tickle compared to what he'd dealt with recently.

The feeling faded quickly, but Tohsaka let out an undignified grunt as she stepped into the circle. "Ow!"

Shirou glanced backward, concerned; she was intact, but glowering at her own spell and rubbing her upper arms. "Are you okay?"

Outrage and something else warred on her face; she finally sighed and nodded, looking defeated. "I'm good. Let's keep moving." She gave him a gentle push, and he obliged by resuming his climb. They moved slowly, cautiously. Shirou halfway expected a wall of fire to pour down the staircase from above, or else that the stairs themselves would flatten into a slide and threaten to break their necks as they tumbled down, but at first, nothing happened. The forested mountain stretched out around them, tranquil nature. Peaceful. (Strangely, there was a discarded pizza box just off the left side of the path that stuck out like a sore thumb; the one real sign of modernity that touched the temple steps.)

They were about halfway up when a girl's voice, high and clear, rang out from before them. "It's obvious what you are," she said. There was bravado to her words, but there was emptiness just under the surface. Something about it sent a pang through his chest, "Normal people wouldn't do what you just did. They'd just walk right into it, and their minds would get fuzzy enough to miss anything weird. You gave yourselves away with all that magic stuff."

"You seem pretty familiar with the boundary field," Rin said offhandedly. "Caster."

Archer was standing more still than Shirou had ever seen him before. The only movement was the gentle sway of the breeze on his long red coat. It was strange; he didn't feel that tense battle-readiness coming off of him anymore.

There was a tired giggle that seemed to come from all around them. "That's pretty funny."

Archer spoke quietly in a strangled tone. "Rin…" Shirou frowned at his back, but didn't get a chance to speak.

Rin growled. She didn't seem to have noticed her Servant's distress. "What's so funny about that? Are you saying I'm wrong?"

Golden light gathered and swirled, resolving after a moment into the shape of… of a _child_, sitting on the lip of the landing about a dozen steps up. Or if not that… She couldn't be older than… what, thirteen or so? Long blond hair was held back by a big black ribbon, a single lock toward the front standing stubbornly at attention, and striking green eyes gazed down solemnly at them. In both hands, its edge touching the steps, she held a long, thin golden sword — almost a sister to the one Archer had summoned yesterday. Lily-white armor over white clothes. Lines of exhaustion or sadness touched the corners of her eyes, a kind of dejected resignation. "You are, but I don't blame you. You can probably tell now-"

Archer made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a gasp, and the girl stopped short, startled. Her eyes flicked nervously to Shirou and Rin. "Is he okay?"

Archer spoke, and though it was still halting and muddled, Shirou realized he had been saying a word. "Sa… ber…?"

The girl frowned. "It's the sword, isn't it? Really gives it away." She tapped the tip of the blade on the ground in a careless way that probably would have dulled a normal blade. _Tink, tink, tink._ "So what does that make you? Assassin? Archer? I haven't met them yet. Not very sneaky, though, so my money's on Archer. It's weird you've got swords, though. So maybe you just aren't very good at your job." There was no edge to the barb, as though her heart wasn't really in it.

There was something very wrong with Archer, and that unnerved Shirou more than anything else. Archer had been fearless in the face of so many things already, but now… He took an unconscious step back, down onto the step behind, and Shirou had to dance backward to keep from being knocked down. "Hey," he grumbled half-heartedly. What could possibly be so wrong with the girl — with Saber?

_Maybe this is like the power lines, and I just can't feel what everyone else does,_ he thought, but when he looked back at Rin, she was wearing the same look of confusion that he felt on his own face.

"Hey, Archer," she called, putting some force into it. "What's wrong with you?"

Archer didn't respond. Shirou edged to the side to get an angle on Archer's face. He stopped; he didn't know what he'd expected, but this twisted mask of shock and horror wasn't it. "Archer?"

The girl hadn't moved from where she sat. She didn't look terrifying at all. If anything, she just looked a little sad and vulnerable. Like she needed a hot cup of tea and a blanket.

"Why haven't you attacked us?" Rin said. It sounded like a challenge.

Saber shrugged, idly switching her grip on the blade from one hand to the other and back again. "Not my job to attack. I'm here to guard the stairs." She nodded forward. "You take another four steps, and I'll have to do something. That's the line."

"Okay," Rin said simply, waving her hand like she smelled something bad, or was trying to wave away a gnat. "Archer, kill this pipsqueak." Shirou shot her a glare, but she just gave him a bored look. "She's so weak I can barely feel her presence," she explained. "She's standing right in front of us. Let's cross her off the list."

Saber didn't react to this in the slightest, but what really threw Shirou off was that Archer didn't either. He just kept staring, as though Saber were a riddle that he could solve with enough focus.

"Look at her," Shirou said, pointing for effect. "She's a _kid_. We can't kill a kid!"

"That's not a kid, Emiya," she said firmly. "She's a Heroic Spirit, summoned in her physical prime. This was just it for her, I guess. Now," she said with a sweet smile and a sweeter voice. "Archer. Kill the kid. Last chance before I burn a Command Seal."

Up above, Saber flinched, but that barely registered. Such a look of venom as Archer shot his Master, Shirou had never seen. It was strange seeing him direct that look at someone who wasn't Shirou. "We can't kill her," he said.

"Why not?" she asked, sweetness gone as if such a thing had never existed at all. "You're pragmatic. You know about war. Saber is an enemy Servant."

"No," he growled.

"_No?"_ Rin shot back incredulously. "You are my _Servant_. Kill her."

Shirou imagined that this was what it felt like to see your parents fight. "Do you even hear yourself, Rin?"

"You know I'm still here, right?" Saber's voice had the monotonous tenor of someone trying to sound bored when they were anything but. "I can hear every word you're saying."

Shirou assessed the situation. Rin was talking a big game, but she seemed reluctant to actually burn a Command Seal on this. Archer was… he didn't know. Shirou watched his face carefully, but beyond the fact that the Servant was clearly upset, he couldn't read any deeper. It unsettled him.

"Fine," Rin said. "We'll do it this way." But instead of raising her command seal, she started _running_ \- not away from Saber, but _toward_ her. The sudden flurry of motion combined with Archer's apparently compromised state of mind left his reactions stunningly slow, and in a moment she was past him. The soles of her shoes slapped loudly against the stone as she ascended.

Rin reached the fourth step above where Archer stood, and Saber lunged faster than any human should have been able to — but then, she _was_ a Servant. Her sword flashed golden in the sunlight, nearly blinding Shirou for a moment, its point driving toward Rin's chest. She was going to die, unless—

With a scream of frustration, Archer grabbed the back of her coat and yanked her back, swinging his sword in a lightning parry in the same smooth motion. The harsh sound of metal on metal echoed throughout the forested hill, and for a moment, the two of them stood there in a strange tableau. The red-and-black sword hadn't shattered, the way it had when he'd tried to deflect against Berserker's massive weapon; it held strong, and he held it in only one hand. He was so much bigger than her, his reach so much longer, even taking into account the length of her sword. It would be a short battle.

Saber seemed to be having the same thought, but the emotions that flickered through her wide-open face were unreadable as she darted backward, feinted to the left, and thrust again. Again, Archer parried with the white sword in his right hand, and from that deflection she flowed into a series of lightning-fast blows. The echoing parries were cacophonous, Archer meeting every last one.

This was something very different than Berserker, Shirou thought, standing side-by-side with Rin. A fight between equals. Neither of the two fights he'd seen had been that. Archer stayed on the defensive at first, dodging and blocking and making half-hearted, easily parried swipes. He must have been reading Saber, learning her fighting style. Where her weaknesses lay. Shirou tried to do the same, suddenly entranced by the flow of battle, the motion of the weapons. She didn't have a tremendous amount of power, he thought, but she made up for it in speed and dexterity. Swords crashed again, and—

_There_, he thought, feeling a small swell of pride. _She left herself open for a second there. Now he'll be able to use that the next time it happens._ He wasn't exactly an expert swordsman — his clash with Lancer had proven that — but he'd learned a lot from sparring with Fuji-nee. He knew a mistake when he saw it.

The pride soured almost instantly when he remembered what exactly he was looking at. Archer wasn't fighting an equal — he was fighting a girl at least five years younger than even he and Rin. How could he analyze such a thing with so much cold detachment, as if this were nothing but a friendly round of kendo? Saber came at Archer with a vicious uppercut, and was thrown slightly off-balance by the defense. Shirou's throat closed in horror; he was about to watch this girl die. But she didn't die — she recovered her balance, the moment passed, and Archer never even seemed to have recognized it was there.

Shirou frowned.

Saber wore a look of intense concentration, her face red with exertion and focus as she swiped, stabbed, lunged. She was graceful — except for the moments when she wasn't. And now that Shirou was keyed into the right wavelength, he could see that Archer wasn't attacking at _all._ He made a show of taking swings, but each one was wide and slow. If he'd fought this way against Berserker, he'd have been eviscerated in seconds.

_She_ was doing everything she could to kill him, and he was barely breaking a sweat.

He glanced to his side at Rin. She looked somewhere between angry and thoughtful, eyes flicking back and forth, following the movements of the blades. Sparks flew, dim in the bright sunlight. "Archer," she said grimly.

Archer didn't respond. Shirou couldn't see his face.

"Why aren't you doing your best, Archer?" She may not have been a swordswoman, Shirou thought, but she apparently knew her own Servant's capabilities better even than Shirou did. "Why are you going easy on her?"

Saber was the one to react to that; she jumped backward, landing in a defensive stance out of immediate reach. Her eyes were somehow both hard and full of shame. "I didn't ask you to go easy on me."

Archer didn't follow; instead, he deliberately stepped down the stairs until he'd crossed her invisible line in the sand. "What's your name?" he asked the girl.

Saber blinked, and she lowered her sword a little. "Saber," she said, and her voice was confused. "Didn't we already-"

"Not your class," Archer growled. "Your _name_. Your True Name."

A lost look passed over Saber's face. "I can't tell you that, even if I wanted to." She looked as though she were growing more uncomfortable with every passing second. "What's yours?"

Archer didn't reply. "Rin," he said calmly. "We have what we came for. It's not Caster, here. It's Saber. We were wrong."

Rin stomped up and jammed a pointer finger deep into his back. "And we can _kill her_." She shook her head, incredulous. "And don't give me that moralizing shit, Archer. You came to my room last night because you wanted to kill Shirou in his sleep. This is about the same level as that."

Shirou choked. "You wanted to _what_?"

Archer turned slowly, and his face was like a thundercloud. "That's my limit. I won't hurt a kid. I can't stop you from using your Command Seal, Rin, but if you make me do this, then from that moment on I will do everything in my power to make sure you lose this war." Shirou had never heard a voice sound so utterly inflexible. "I will follow only the strictest letter of your demands, and I will find a way to ruin every direction you give me. You ready to lose over this?"

Rin looked as though she'd been slapped, and as her face went red with indignant anger, she grabbed Archer by his coat and shook him. It was like trying to shake an oak tree. "Archer," she hissed. "What is this?"

His own face was darkened almost to the point of illegibility. "I will not kill a child."

With a confused frown, not considering his actions at all, Shirou stepped forward. He needed to defuse this. He had to _stop_ this. However it was going to end, it would end badly. Horrifically. He couldn't let that happen. "Knock it off!" he yelled, clapping a hand roughly on each of their arms-

_a radiant smile framed by golden hair-_

_a flash of blue_

_hard to make anything out_

_the fog of time and lost memory weighs heavy_

_a girl-_

_the girl?_

_older _

_maybe just wiser_

_their hands interlinked on the hilt of a sword-_

_that sword?_

_screaming a word that he can't make out-_

_loss and adoration and guilt and envy and disdain and friendship and bitter regret and love turns to loss turns sour turns to anger and grief and and i ask of you are you my-_

Shirou's hand jerked backed as though he'd touched a live wire, memory that didn't belong to him arching electric through his body. Archer moved like lightning himself, planting a hand on Shirou's chest and shoving him hard enough that he lost his already precarious balance. The world spun, framing the anger — it was definitely anger, now — boiling across Archer's face, and he wondered if this was how he died—flying down the stairs, with his brains splattered stupidly on the stone steps.

Rin was the one who caught him, her hands in his poor, abused shirt. She strained and heaved and almost went over herself, but she managed to keep both of them upright. With heavy breath, she let go of him, and he wavered anyway.

The flashes of memory were already fading, the way you forgot a dream more and more the longer you were awake - but one thing didn't drift away: the bone-deep, aching sense of loss and confusion.

The recognition.

"What did you do?" Archer hissed, the blade in his right hand falling to the ground and evaporating as he grabbed Shirou by the throat and lifted him high onto the air. The black and red metal of his second sword gleamed cruelly in the afternoon light.

"Archer!" Rin's voice cut through like a knife. "Back off! What the _fuck_?"

Shirou couldn't breathe. Pressure pounded in his head, his blood demanding oxygen and unable to circulate properly, and his lungs burned after only a few moments. His hands scrabbling against Archer's, he looked down at the man choking the life out of him, intent to kill pouring off of him — and yet, even as his legs kicked feebly at Archer's chest, what he felt was not fear, but an empathetic sadness he didn't quite understand. "You're not afraid, are you?" he asked; though he couldn't speak with no air, he could mouth the words. "This... isn't fear."

Archer's knuckles tightened on his throat, and stars swam across Shirou's vision. "What did you see?"

Shirou shook his head, the fog of confusion clearing a little even as a different fog descended upon him. "I don't know," he whispered truthfully, carefully shaping each word like his life depended on it. "I saw…" What _had_ he seen? "You knew her, didn't you?" This was between them. He had a vague idea that Rin was yelling and ineffectually punching Archer in the side, where he'd been cut open. "When you were alive."

The tip of Archer's sword shook violently, his eyes widening just a hair. For as reserved as he was, in that moment it was strange how easy to read his expressions were. His grip loosened just a hair, and a trickle of air passed Shirou's lips. "Like I told you both, I don't remember anything about who I am," he said, and though he gave no specific tell, Shirou knew at a bone deep, intuitive level that he was lying. Why did he know that?

"But you remember _her_," Shirou forced his lips to say.

The world pulsed and pounded and grew muffled. He was losing consciousness, he realized, and only then did the fear really kick in. He struggled, but by now he could barely do even that.

A dark voice cut through the blackness. "**There is no time,"** Assassin said, and even in his current state, Shirou could hear the urgency that had never been there before. "**We must leave.**"

Archer dropped Shirou, and he landed hard, doubling over and sucking in great whooping breaths. His head ached horribly, but the color had begun to return to the world. Even Rin had been startled out of her anger. "Leave?" She asked dazedly. "But Saber's not strong enough to-"

"**It is not Saber,"** Assassin boomed, rattling Shirou's already pounding skull. "**Another Servant nears. Retreat will soon become impossible. Caster is here."**

* * *

_Thanks as always to everyone who reads and shares and comments!_

_Next chapter: Knights of Shame_


	16. Knights of Shame

_Note: Hey! So a couple orders of business before the chapter._

_FIRST. I'm posting today instead of tomorrow because I'm going to be very busy all day tomorrow._

_SECOND. I'm confident enough in the structure of the fic going forward that I'm dividing it into Acts. This is mostly an aesthetic thing, I'm not going to be publishing them as different fics or anything. From the beginning to now (and the next few )is all a part of ACT 1: WIND IN DRY GRASS. (There will be five acts.)_

_THIRD. For the next two months, I'm going to be publishing every other week instead of weekly. I'm about to start a full time job for the summer, and I don't want to burn through my whole buffer all at once if it turns out I can't keep up on writing while I'm working. We should resume the normal posting schedule around chapter 20. MAYBE earlier if it turns out I can do both better than I think I can._

_That's it!_

* * *

Minutes fractured into seconds into moments. Time was a spider's web of broken glass into infinity. His mind impaled itself on their jagged edges.

The moment he'd laid eyes on Saber — not her, but _her_ nevertheless — that feeling of ever-pervasive _wrongness_ had wrapped its slick, putrid tendrils around his beating heart and _squeezed. _He was breathing, but he was suffocating. He could yet see, but he was blind.

"**Another Servant nears."**

It was always there, in the background. Assassin was the only other thing that had triggered this sense of reverse-deja-vu so powerfully, and Archer had been able to mostly suppress it with him. Assassin was wrong, but he was a stranger, and so it was easy to accept and reconcile. There was no part of Archer's mind trying to recognize him as someone important.

"**Retreat will soon become impossible."**

This Saber was _Saber_, but she _wasn't_ Saber. Echoes that he could barely understand rattled in his head like portentous knucklebones in a cup. Snatches of things remembered so clearly from when he'd been an idealistic fool instead of a cynical, broken one. So much was gone, but she always remained. So much was the same — the color of the hair, the cowlick, those piercing green eyes that he would recognize until the last of his mortal memories had crumbled away… and yet, so much was different. Unfinished. Childlike. Every time he looked at this girl his vision seemed to double, trying to overlay the woman he knew atop the girl's slender, slightly gangly frame. Again, the words _phantom world_ roared and clanged, echoing church bells signaling a doom he still couldn't see_._

"**Caster is here."**

Saber looked down with them with both fear and… something else. Pride that she'd held the line? Shame that he hadn't respected her as a warrior? Maybe both. That doubling—

If she had been the person he knew, he could have done what needed to be done. He truly believed he'd be ready for it, right down to his very core. But this…. This was cruel. This Saber was just a kid. Archer could kill Saber, and Archer could kill a kid, but together—

He needed to kill her. It was the right way to accomplish his goals, wasn't it? He had one objective, and leaving Saber alive didn't help him accomplish that.

His goal.

He could have done it right then, he realized. Snapped Shirou's neck, opened his belly, smashed his skull against the stone. Rin wouldn't have reacted fast enough to stop him, and by then, blissfully true nonexistence might already have overtaken him. He hadn't been able to _think,_ because if Shirou had seen the same things Archer had —

"_Archer?" _Rin was tugging urgently on his sleeve. "I don't know what's _wrong_ with you but we need to go!"

She was right. They couldn't fight both Servants here. Objectively, she was correct, as she was about a lot of things. There was another reason he was loathe to kill a potential ally, however, and this, he tried to tell himself, was the most important thing: whatever was rotten in this world was bigger than the Holy Grail War. What he was sensing was a ripple at the edge of a pond; nothing but the barest side effect of… _something. _He didn't know what, and that terrified him.

Focus. He had to _focus. _There would be time for the spiral later. Right now, Caster was coming, and he couldn't remember who Caster was supposed to be, but even if he could everything was so up in the air-

Once again, they ran. Down the stairs, two, three at a time, flying downward as fast as they could safely go. Saber wasn't following, but if Assassin was right, they had but precious moments. They'd make it. The way was clear, and Rin, at their front, wasn't more than a dozen or so steps from the entrance.

That was when the hooded figure, clothed in rich, dark purple, materialized, blocking the way. A heavy mantle hung on her shoulders, her eyes completely hidden by the hood — all that was visible was a smooth chin and a delightedly cruel smile. "Ah, Saber, you've been entertaining our guests? How gracious of you."

The three of them skidded to a halt, and Rin weaved a hasty shield of shimmering red light before them.

"I did as you asked, Master," Saber said. Archer shot a look back, fighting the doubling overexposure, the Saber he knew trying to overlay herself over the girl, and saw that the Saber that was here had followed them down, maintaining roughly the same distance. "They did not pass me." Her voice was firm and deferential at the same time.

Caster clapped her black-gloved hands together, the grin only widening — no, not Caster, she _couldn't_ be Caster, Saber had called her Master and a Servant couldn't have its own Servant, could she? But that aura of power was unmistakable. That _was_ a Servant that stood before them. "Well done, Saber," she cooed, though her voice was cold and condescending. "That's a third time you've repelled the enemy. My wildest expectations have been surpassed."

Saber's shoulders hunched, but it was Rin who spoke next. "Don't get in our way, Caster," she warned. "I'm a powerful Magus of this time, and my Archer could take you in a fight with both hands tied behind his back."

"That's not true, Mistress," Saber mumbled. "Archer isn't at full strength, and he's distracted. There won't be a better time to force this fight." She sounded reluctant, but her voice also carried the weight of someone who knew where they stood, and comprehended that they had no will of their own.

Archer knew the feeling well.

Shirou's eyes went wide, but Archer wasn't surprised. If Saber felt she had a duty, she would follow through with it to the end — no matter how badly she was hurt in the process.

They had both been fools.

Shirou shook his head. "Listen, Saber, you can't just-"

"Is that your opinion as my tool?" Caster asked dismissively, ignoring him.

Rin touched Shirou's arm, and he looked at her, surprised. "Don't beg," she said quietly. "It doesn't help."

Saber shrugged and looked away, shifting her sword to her other hand. "It is," she said softly. She readied her sword, lifting it in preparation for her grim task. Rin uttered a few more phrases, thickening and strengthening her shield. Shirou looked from one side to the other helplessly. At some point, he'd found that useless stick he'd brought, and he was trying to look threatening with it.

For a long moment, nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

"Then let's end this," Caster said, and faster than the space between one breath and the next, she had thrust her hand forward, dark runes and lines of energy swirling. Corrosive magic shot forward, and Rin took it full on her shield with a grunt. She started muttering too, and the red light wavered and pulsed, but didn't collapse.

Simultaneously, Saber leapt from her high perch and came down with a strong overhead swing, yelling wordlessly with exertion, but the one who parried it was not Archer.

It was Shirou.

His arms were shaking, holding his pathetic branch like it was some kind of indestructible greatsword, and his breath came in panicked, raspy gasps, his face still crimson, but he'd taken the blow and held his ground. Archer would have parried it without too much trouble, and yet Shirou had tried to save his life at risk of his own.

Idiot. He was such a fucking idiot.

Archer stepped back, giving Shirou room to maneuver. There were two outcomes here that would satisfy him - Shirou would hold Saber off, and Archer wouldn't have to fight her… or Shirou would get his own stupid head cut off. Either way was a win for him.

* * *

The first blow nearly broke Shirou's arms, he thought. The vibration of metal on strengthened-wood was almost enough to tear him apart all on its own. But there was something interesting, there — this wasn't the first Servant's attack that he'd tried to block, but Lancer had torn through his defenses with ease. For all that it hurt, for as fast as she moved and as powerful as her weapon must be, he still managed to keep hold of his stick.

Saber looked surprised, too. Surprised, then ashamed, and then angry. "Get out of my way," she said hotly. Such viciousness was strange, coming off someone who looked so much younger than him. It didn't gel with those wide eyes.

"You don't have to do this," he shot back. It was all he could think to say, but it sounded limp even to him.

Her sword pulled back, and Shirou had no time to ready himself before she struck again, and again. Each time, though his muscles felt sluggish and thick, he managed to keep her sword from tearing into him. He grunted, and his body burned far beyond what his actual level of exertion should have justified; he hadn't recovered nearly enough from the last two days to be engaging in a swordfight like this.

Saber's lips were set in a bloodless determination. She didn't even dignify what he'd said with a response as she came at him again.

"She's-" He grunted, another pulse of reverberation shaking him to his core. "She's cruel, isn't she?" His hands throbbed, and he pushed her sword away just long enough to buy himself a breath.

She didn't respond, but her mouth tightened subtly. She was better than him, and stronger. She's been a better student to someone than Shirou had been to Fuji-nee. The gulf in their experience wasn't so great as between her and Archer, but Shirou knew that he was probably the weak link in their defense. Even a glancing blow shook the latticework of magic laced through the wood, and it was becoming more and more clear that he was running out of time.

She refused to stop moving, like water with no equilibrium to find. Pull back and thrust. He twisted, redirecting her momentum into the ground, where her sword sparked on the stone of the steps.

Behind him, fire crackled and burned, throwing blazing heat against his back. The battle between Rin and Caster raged. He didn't look back. He just had to trust that Rin would pull through. Despite everything she'd done, the way she'd spoken to Sakura… He did have faith in her. She tried so hard to be cold and cruel, and she _could_ be, but when push came to shove, she'd always done the right thing. Rin was a good person, and she was a good Magus. She'd pull through.

He held strong, keeping his stick pressed against her weapon to keep her from pulling back. "That's not what a Master should be," he said doggedly. She tugged, but he pushed harder. "Someone who's cruel to someone they have power over isn't worth respecting."

"I have no choice," she hissed, and Shirou wondered if she was so angry because she herself had already thought the very words he was saying. They were nothing especially deep or profound, but he didn't think anyone had ever said them to her out loud. With another heavy pull, she yanked the golden sword backward, and in so doing shattered his makeshift weapon. The structure broken, the magical energy suffusing it dissipated as it fell to pieces. He took a nervous step backward, and she raised her sword high.

_Don't beg_, the Rin in his head whispered. He wouldn't beg. This wasn't about saving his life. Slowly, he raised his hands to show that he was weaponless. He didn't look away from her, though. "That's just what you've been told, isn't it? There's always a choice."

The tip of her sword hit the ground gently, her arm going slightly limp, and Shirou almost started to relax. Her eyes were veiled behind a curtain of hair that had come loose from her bow. She didn't speak.

"Let us help you." He didn't know how he would, he didn't know what had or what was happening to her, but this was a girl who was clearly suffering. A hero of justice couldn't let such a thing be. He took a gentle step forward, toward her. A grand story played out in his head; one where he rescued the damsel-in-distress from the cruel witch, gave her a place to be safe, another chance. "Saber. Let us-"

But then Caster's voice tore through their moment of stalemate, commanding and imperious. "Saber! Finish him!"

Saber's jaw tightened, and in that moment he knew that he had been well and truly defeated. "I have a duty," the girl said heavily, as if each word weighed a hundred tons. "You don't get to ignore duty because you don't like it." She looked up at him, and her eyes were glistening. He didn't think it was for him, specifically. He thought they were for herself. The abject unfairness of the situation that would make her feel so trapped made him angry, more than anything else about the situation. The tears didn't fall as she raised her sword one last time to finish him off.

He didn't have anywhere to go. Even if he did get away, that would just leave Rin and Archer open for Caster and Saber to tear apart. He could no longer stop that from happening, but he could die without betraying himself. Like she'd just said: it didn't matter if he liked it or not. It was what he had to do. Still, he could try to catch her arms, or duck out of the way enough to avoid the blow, right?

With one last yell, she brought her sword down on him.

"God damn you!" Archer shouted as he crossed his swords over Shirou's head, catching her blade mere inches from his scalp with a horrible grinding screech. "Get out of the way, you stupid bastard!"

His body moved before his brain had even processed the fact that he wasn't dead, ducking out of Archer's way as he rejoined the fight.

* * *

Rin was outmatched in a way she could barely comprehend. She trained hard. She _studied_ hard. She had a bone-deep, instinctual understanding of magic theory and application on a fundamental level — and Caster was toying with her.

Toying with _her._

A torrent of flame rushed toward her, crackling and roaring, accompanied by a _woosh_ing rush of hot air. No time to think — if she thought, she wouldn't react fast enough, and all three of them would be dead. A shouted word in German, a lightning-quick motion with her fingers, and the flame blasted harmlessly past on either side, as if an untouchable wedge had been driven into it as it approached. Trees were sprayed with liquid fire, the seeds of a potential conflagration. Sweat ran down Rin's neck as she panted, her limbs like jelly. Even after she'd quickly learned to redirect rather than block, it was still taking too much out of her.

"That all you've got, hag?" she taunted.

The psycho smirk hadn't left Caster's face over the course of their whole duel, and she had yet to break a sweat. "I'm testing your limits, girl," she purred in a silky voice. "I'm in the market for an apprentice, you see."

Rin snorted. "No one understands the whole _fight to the death_ part of the Grail War, do they?" With the momentary lull, she pulled a trickle from one of her rapidly depleting stock of mana gems; not enough to dull its power, but enough to reinforce her own. "You're insane if you think I'd agree to work with you."

Caster laughed coldly. "Do you think what any of us want is ever relevant to what happens to us? How cute." With a lazy flick of her hand, the temperature dropped, icicles forming in a lethal ring a dozen feet above Rin's head. They dripped with condensation, spinning, and then whistled as one as they lanced down at her skull.

Rin waved a hand, and a wave of force hit the icicles perpendicular, shattering and sweeping left into the trees. Even as that death was averted, she was weaving a second spell, flattening the second set of icicles trying to shoot up from the cold ground. Cracking ice echoes mingling with the dull thuds and clangs behind her gave the whole scene even more of a chaotic, unpredictable feel.

"Impressive," Caster called with a condescending clap."You've mustered a defense that some of the slower children I knew might have been proud of."

Rin forced herself to stand straight and tall. She wasn't nearing the ends of her reserves, but Caster demanded a rapid and unforgiving pace; Rin was an endurance runner, not a sprinter. Five fingers extended, she fired a Gandr shot that ruffled Caster's hood as it passed. She hadn't missed, she was sure of it — but she hadn't even detected a whiff of a magical defense. Could Caster's defenses be that subtle?

A slender hand reached up to adjust the hood, an idle correction of something as meaningless as a passing breeze. "I'm sorry, I thought you wanted to kill me, not kiss me on the cheek." The red slash of a smile grew hungry. "It won't spare your life, but if you showed the proper deference on your knees, I might show you leniency someday."

Rin took a step back, unnerved, and Caster capitalized on the moment of surprise with another blast of fire, this one black and cold — a fire that was not a release of heat, but a void of energy. Pointed tendrils of it shot from Caster's hands, five of them, twisting and weaving unpredictably, crackling with latent death. "Shit," Rin hissed, clapping her hands together and then sweeping them heavenward, palms up. Waves of pure magic, too hastily cobbled together to be delicate, shot upward to block their path. Four of the lines fizzled into nothing as they passed through her barrier, but the fifth wavered, weakened… and plunged deep into her shoulder.

What hit her so overwhelmingly was not pain, at first, but an overwhelming, freezing _cold _that radiated out from the fattest part of her upper arm. She grunted, refusing to give more of a reaction than that, come whatever may, her whole arm going numb and useless.

The black line wavered and wobbled until Caster reached out and closed her fingers around it as though it were a rope. Or maybe like a harpoon. She blew Rin an imperious kiss with the other, the line went taut, and that was when the pain finally hit like a sledgehammer.

Needles pierced every cell in her body, battery acid dumped onto every inch of her magic circuits. She fell to her knees with a scream that she could barely hear over the sound of her body tearing itself apart.

"Rin!" Two voices screamed. She didn't have the wherewithal to place them, but they must have been Archer and Shirou.

"Don't," she gasped through the razors gouging at her throat. "Stay back…" Her back arched and her hands flexed and she distantly wondered if she was going to just pitch over the stairs.

The black line pulsed and buzzed like a swarm of carrion insects, and Caster took one step up the stairs, then another, lazily drawing closer. "You are weak, girl, but you possess a great deal of potential," she said unhurriedly. "Moreso than anyone else I've met in this era." The line shortened as she approached, remaining tight. "I've made my decision."

Rin groaned and shook, but forced her eyes up to meet Caster's. Or at least, to stare defiantly into where her eyes _should_ have been. "I don't… give a shit… about being your apprentice," she forced herself to say, though words were getting harder and harder to form. _Think, Rin, __**think**__. What kind of spell is this? What's she doing to you?_ The pain was coordinated and all encompassing, but that didn't narrow it down; a kind of pulsing agony and tearing sensation —

A tearing sensation. Tearing. _Pulling_. She gasped, and this time it was not from pain but from realization. A siphon. The black line was a mana siphon, and Caster was draining her body of every drop of magic. The tether, then, must be how it was being drawn back into Caster's own body. Then-

_Is this what Shirou feels?_

Distracting thoughts had to be put aside. It wasn't the time for sentimentality or rumination. There was a weakness starting to set in that she liked even less than the pain, and she needed to figure out how to counter this.

_Is this what Assassin does to him?_

She didn't have the strength to cut the cord. Anything that involved a spell would be beyond her until the drain was gone. That didn't leave her a whole lot of options.

Caster stood over her, pulling off her glove with her teeth. _That can't be good_.

So, a spell was out of the question. Could she do something with the energy flow? Redirect it, or… _something?_ If her head had been clear, she'd have come up with a solution by now, she was sure of it. She couldn't _think_ through this pain.

_He's endured this and he still wants to fight?_

Calculations and blueprints and a thousand different ideas raced through her head, half-seen snatches of inspiration that she could only desperately grasp for and _hope._

Caster's cool fingers brushed her cheek, and she didn't move; her whole body trembled with the effort of not just falling down at her feet. She would _not _give her the pleasure. "This is the final test, you see. If you die here, you would never have been able to survive my training. How long can you withstand your very magic circuits being turned against you?" Her nails were long and sharp as she dragged them softly across Rin's cheek.

"I don't… know…" she gasped. "How long… can _you?"_ Caster's head tilted slightly, and Rin stopped fighting the drain. For a moment, the flow of energy from her to Caster was completely unresisted, a pure channel created between them. The pain receded even as the weakness increased, and Caster jerked back slightly in surprise as more magic than she had been expected flooded over her.

_There_.

Rin's shaking hand shot out and grasped the black line, and with a scream, _pulled_ with every single one of her aching, abused magical circuits. Caster was stronger than her, but her concentration had wavered for the briefest of moments in surprise, and that was her chance. For a moment, the burning was so all-encompassing that she was _sure_ she'd burn out completely, but then the thing she'd been hoping for happened.

The direction of the flow reversed.

Even as pain turned to euphoria and weakness turned to strength, Caster doubled over and grabbed at her stomach, screaming in surprised suffering as _her_ mana was ripped from her body in the cruelest way possible. It was like a cool drink of water after starving in the desert. It was like a hot bath after a long, hard day. It was-

Distracting.

She shook her head, panting with exertion, and began preparing a counterattack. There were only moments before Caster would gather herself enough to retake the line, and she had to do something big before then. Her mind was still scrambled, though, and she was terrified that she just _wouldn't_ come up with something in time. Caster's screaming abated into a kind of growl, and she rose up slowly, smile gone into a gritted-teeth grimace of pain and anger. Moments were left. She was out of time, and she had nothing.

And that was exactly the moment that Shirou Emiya flew past her, hands clenched into fists, screaming in anger, and delivered a bone-cracking right hook to Caster's jaw. Magic crackled around his Strenthened arm, barely controlled.

Time seemed to freeze. Rin's mouth hung open in stupefied shock.

The line snapped. Caster's head rocked back, a trickle of blood flying into the air with her, and she toppled backward. She was a Servant; it wasn't a powerful enough attack to do any kind of substantial damage, but the sheer _surprise _of it seemed to have momentarily stunned her. Shirou turned, his eyes blazing with righteous anger and concern, and thrust a hand toward her. "Come on! We have to go!"

She grabbed his hand, slightly dazed and empty from the disappearance of the siphon, and allowed herself to be pulled into a run.

* * *

Archer was getting pretty sick and tired of having to cover for Rin's retreats, but this time, at least, he believed he could win.

Rin hijacking Caster's spell (and Shirou's stupid fucking punch) had bought just enough time for the three of them to slip past Caster's blockade, and she had not been happy about it. She was the only one following, though. Saber had remained on the stairs, which was interesting, but not something he needed to waste time considering at the moment.

Fighting Caster was nothing like fighting Berserker or Assassin had been. Where they had been fast but overwhelmingly powerful, Caster was mobile and unpredictable. He couldn't take a direct hit from her magic without some serious damage, but a glancing blow would be a lot more survivable than one from Berserker's great stone sword would be.

A beam lanced down from above, seemingly generated by the kaleidoscopic swirl of her cloak, and he danced out of the way, turning and throwing his sword in one fluid motion. It flew true, and she had to swerve in the air to dodge its wicked blade. She wasn't talking, now, and anger was the only thing on her face. That was fine with Archer. He could _make_ her talk.

He didn't know where Rin and Shirou were. They'd slipped away in the confusion, so now it was just the two of them. Cat and mouse in the forests around Ryuudou, inside the boundary field. Archer had broken through, just as he'd thought he could, and they both knew that drawing too much attention from the city would be bad for both of them. Even at less than full strength, Archer wasn't worried.

Icicles pounded down at him from all sides, and a fresh set of blades rose up to meet them. Cold shrapnel rained down onto him, and he leapt high into the air to meet her. Staff clashed against steel, and he was rebuffed. He twisted in midair, barely getting out of the way of a channeled bolt of lightning. It hit the spot he would have landed with an unstable _crack._

"So what did you do?" He asked carelessly, belying the confusion and anger that still boiled within him. "How did a Servant get a Servant?"

Caster laughed, trying to pin him down into a high ring of fire. "Does it matter, little man? Knowing won't help you end it."

"How did you get a Saber?" He leapt up high again, flipping over the flames and throwing his swords once again. The attacks were a formality at this point, neither of them seemed to be able to land a decent hit on the other.

"You're beginning to bore me, Archer," she said idly, snapping her fingers. Bonds of energy flowed over and around him, sliding off of his magic resistance like water off a duck's back. She was barely even trying.

"Alright," he said, landing on his feet and allowing his swords to vanish. "I'll be more direct." Caster frowned, floating slightly lower, cautious. He could feel his throat burning as he spoke. "How did you summon _her?"_

Caster didn't move for a long few moments. Then the smile spread across her face once more. "So you know her, then." Her voice was wondering and smug at the same time. "You know her true name."

Archer could feel his jaw tighten without his permission. "I do. Artoria Pendragon. Am I incorrect?" His voice was a challenge.

Her smile widened. "Interesting, interesting. You've bought yourselves a few seconds of reprieve. Judging by your reaction, this isn't idle knowledge. You knew her."

He didn't respond, a thousand conflicting feelings coursing confusingly through him. His fingers twitched, longing for a blade. He didn't even know what he was trying to accomplish, or what his goal was. What did confronting Caster about it change?

Why did _this_ fill him with such hatred and revulsion?

She tapped her chin performatively. "Hmm, let's see… If you knew her, then you were alive at the same time as her."

Archer didn't laugh. He didn't even smile. But it was funny how she could be so correct and so wrong at the same time.

"A Knight of the Table, perhaps? I'm sure a great deal of Heroic Spirits have been drawn from that particular gathering of righteous fools." Caster tilted her head, seemingly enjoying the puzzle. "Gawain? No, you are not made so unstoppable by the sun, or I would likely be dead. Lancelot and Mordred seem unlikely, considering that what you feel doesn't look to be hate. Not solely, in any case."

Archer stared up at her, stone-faced.

She looked like she was having as much fun as she had been during the battle. "Tristan is a possibility, but not a good one… Galahad might be as well, but let's be honest, Archer, I don't believe you to be nearly so pure."

Rage bubbled in his gut like a boiling cauldron, like caustic indigestion, and he forced it down.

"Bedivere, Gareth…" She laughed. "Agravain might fit, though. Arrogant, cruel, loveless but dedicated…" She spread her hands. "I don't know if Agravain ever had any particular skill with a bow, but for an Archer, you don't seem to care much for the weapon."

"You've done your research," he said blandly.

"Although for all I know…" Her hands returned to her side, and her voice turned somehow even more barbed and mocking. "When I performed the summoning, I didn't expect the legendary King Arthur to be a woman. For all I know, the legends had many things backward. Are you Guinevere, searching through the ages for your lost love?"

"It shouldn't have been possible," he growled softly.

She tilted her head slowly. "Oh, it was very possible—" she began.

"Not for you to summon a Servant," he cut her off. "For you to summon _her_. She isn't supposed to be—" He bit the words off, his face twisting into a snarl.

Caster was silent. He didn't elaborate. She'd stopped shifting around. She'd stopped making joyless conversation. Her cloak ruffled without wind to move it. Finally, carefully haughty, yet somehow cautious, she asked, "And what makes you say that?" She still wore her smile, but there was less cruel energy to it.

"She should have been—" He stopped himself. What was he doing here? What was he hoping to gain? For all he knew, she was _behind_ the pervasive wrongness that he felt in this world.

Caster's smile faded. Her expression — what he could see of it — grew stoic. "So you can feel it, too." Her voice was serious; there was no playful edge or manic intensity to it any longer.

Something pulsed within him. Nothing physical, and nothing magical — this was fear, plain and simple. If she knew something was wrong… Then it wasn't just him. It wasn't just the disconnect between his memories and the events he'd seen over the last few days. "This world is rotting," he said quietly.

"Rotting…" Caster repeated thoughtfully. "I sensed something the moment I entered this world. At first I thought it was my Master's weakness corrupting me; then I thought it was this modern era that was in decay. I tried to ignore it. But if I'm not the only one who feels it..."

"It's everything," he muttered. "Every atom and every moment."

Though he couldn't see her eyes, her gaze was piercing. "Like streets drenched in dried blood that no one else can see," she said.

"Like water smothered in oil," he replied.

Both of them were silent under the weight of the shared realization.

"This doesn't make us allies," he said finally.

"Of course not," she said, a little less flippantly than he'd hoped. "We are enemies, and we will remain as such."

He nodded. "I wouldn't want it any other way. This is bigger than the War, though, isn't it?"

Caster drifted to the ground; her heels touched lightly as dead sticks crackled. "Whatever is causing this disturbance… Yes, I believe it is. Your analogy to rot was accurate. Do not mistake me; I have no interest in fixing this. I am done with altruism. If the world rots, I will watch it go with a smile."

Archer smirked. "But you don't want to die not knowing, do you? Your curiosity would destroy you first."

Caster's face tightened. He'd guessed right. "If you are determined to solve this riddle… Then this is what I believe, based on what I have sensed. This is recent. Something in the last fifty years or so happened that the World should have prevented. Everything wrong with this reality spirals from one point."

"The way even the smallest cut can lead to infection if left untreated," Archer finished.

Caster smiled humorlessly. "And sometimes the only cure for an infection that corrupts too deeply is amputation."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Archer said automatically.

Caster waved a hand dismissively. "I don't really care."

They stood in silence, facing each other, once again. "So what now?" Archer asked. "Do we go back to fighting, or what?"

"I no longer have the taste," she said with a sigh and a limp shrug. "I will fight if you force me to, but I would much rather return to the Temple. I'm sure you've determined it to be impregnable."

"More or less," Archer said. "I've learned a good deal from the attack. I know that I could take you if I needed to."

Caster laughed. "If that what will allow you to sleep tonight. I will allow you to leave with your life."

Archer gave a facetious bow. "My gratitude knows no bounds."

"Neither does your insolence," Caster fired back. She turned to leave.

The moment her back was turned, Archer began to Project. A great bow nearly as tall as he was appeared in his hands, a long, thin sword that twisted into something like an arrow nocked. He pulled back slowly. So slowly that the string didn't creak. She drew further away as he readied the attack until, wordlessly, he loosed the arrow-sword.

It whistled as it flew through the air and plunged into Caster's back, tearing through cloak and body both in its destructive journey before lodging itself hilt-deep in a thick tree and disappearing. Rather than being rewarded with the sight of a body falling or fading into golden light, the cloak fluttered to the ground, empty. Caster materialized a few feet to the double's left, smiling coldly at him, some of that cruel intensity back in her gaze. "So you _do_ know how to use a bow, after all."

He shrugged. "Worth a shot," he said offhandedly.

"Indeed," she said, then disappeared in a cloud of softly glowing purple butterflies.

* * *

_Next chapter: Facade_


	17. Facade

Sakura was used to being by herself. Aside from the time she spent with Senpai, it was when she was happiest. No smiles to fake, no abuses to endure, no agonies to suffer. Silence was peace, because silence meant that she had nothing to fear.

Today, silence meant uncertainty, and uncertainty meant terror.

Had she ever been in this house without a chaperone before, outside of the few brief moments the day before? She didn't think she had. Senpai or Ms. Fujimura were always around, even if that only meant her Senpai was passed out in the shed on the other side of the property. To be utterly and completely alone here was… a new experience, and not one that she entirely liked. Everything was so still; even the air seemed to hang heavy. Familiar furniture and appliances seemed to take on sinister intentions, even in broad daylight.

The first thing she did, after standing in a daze for a couple minutes, grappling with all that, was turn on a faucet. It was white noise, but it was better than the silence that seemed to whisper _death_ in her ear. Not her own death, of course. It was an easy lie to tell herself that her own death didn't scare her anymore, but the idea of not _knowing_ whether Senpai was still breathing, wherever he was, was enough to override almost everything else. What if they were right, and there was a Servant at the temple? What if they were captured? What if they were killed? What if Rin stabbed him in the back? She could be betraying him right now and Sakura would be powerless to do a thing to stop it.

Why did he trust Rin? Why did he believe in her? Sakura knew one thing about magi, and it was that you could never, under any circumstances trust one. (That applied to her just as much as it did to Rin, but she was too cowardly to make Senpai understand that.) They could smile and laugh together when it was safe, but when it came down to life and death? That was something entirely different.

He was not dead. He was not being killed or torn apart. He was not being tortured and he was not being betrayed. He was fine and Rin was fine and the blood she saw in her mind wasn't real, the breaking bones weren't real, the distant rustling of worms and sounds of screams were not real because Senpai and Rin were fine and Sakura was a stupid, stupid girl who let her fears carry her away, but what _if-_

The circumstances were new, but the spiral was familiar, like an old set of slippers, and she knew how to combat it. She had to stay busy, and there was a lot to do in this house. Signs of battle were still everywhere, not having been fixed or cleaned in the two days since Lancer's attack, and she set about doing what she could to remedy that. Humming tunelessly under her breath, she swept shards of glass into a pile, then swept that pile into a dustpan, which she emptied into the trash. Over the open window, she hung a sheet, to at least give the illusion of privacy, then began collecting the pieces of a broken table. She wasn't much good with her hands, but she might be able to do something with it.

It took two trips to carry all of it out to the yard, dumping the wood into a rough pile with a clatter. After arranging the pieces into a facsimile of what it had once been, she pressed her hand to the largest hunk of wood and closed her eyes. Magic didn't hurt, not anymore. Instead, it felt like plunging her hand into freezing jelly; slimy and unnatural and stomach-turning. She didn't like it or dislike it anymore. It was just how things were.

Beside her, in the garden, one of the flowers she had planted withered into something grey and twisted; then another, and then another. Matou's magic was not like Tohsaka's magic. Grandfather liked to call what they did "redistribution," but he always said it with an ironic smile on his face. It was stealing energy from one place so that you could put it into another. Usually, that meant killing something to get what you wanted done. Practice at home usually involved the death of a few worms, but she wasn't exactly about to mourn those. The flowers were more of a loss. They were the only things on the property that were hers, and she didn't want to take what didn't belong to her.

Sweat beaded on her brow, and her breath came faster. Had she been a true Matou, and not a counterfeit, this would have been easy, but for her it was anything but. Threads of energy twisted from the dying plants into the splintered wood, and the end table began to knit itself back together. She wasn't as good at this as she should have been; the repair job was anything but seamless. Where each break had been, there had emerged a gnarled, ropy scar that stood out from the smooth surface. She released the spell with a sigh of relief.

She frowned down at the table. Where before it had been shattered, it had been functional, now it was ugly and misshapen. Would it even be level enough to set a drink onto it? She wasn't sure. It would probably wobble and topple over if someone weren't careful but… She had to remind herself that it was beyond any kind of usefulness before she'd touched it, even if now it was scarred and twisted and wrong.

She wondered if the strange feeling she felt in her gut was what Grandfather felt when he looked at her.

There were more things to mend, but she felt drained, and there weren't a lot of flowers left for her to use, so she focused on cleaning. Each chore led to another to another to another, and before she realized how much time had passed, the house was glimmering and spotless. Her hands ached a little from scrubbing, and her skin burned a little from the chemicals she'd used. She'd moved in a daze, forcing herself to focus on the repetitive tasks. If she kept herself on task, there would be no extra room to think about how worried she was. (Senpai's headless body, torn to pieces by an enemy Servant, embraced her in her mind, and she forced the image away before she started screaming.)

There was nothing left to do, though, to drive away those images, and Surviving Sakura had begun to take violent hold of her thoughts before Feeling Sakura had a thought that broke through the numbness —

_Why don't I cook them something? You don't cook for people who are dead, so if they have food waiting for them, they won't die._

It was the logic of a child, and it was stupid, but she latched onto it like a lifeline thrown to a drowning girl. It was something else to throw herself into, and hopefully they'd be back before the food was done and she found herself all alone with enough food for four people all to herself because Rin and Senpai were dead on the pavement somewhere-

_They're fine, and I'm going to have lunch cooking when they get back._

For a while, it worked, and as she chopped and measured and poured and simmered, it turned out that for a while was long enough. Just as the idea of thoughts she shouldn't have began to drift at the edges of her awareness, she heard the distant sounds of voices shouting. One was male, and one was female, and the pot of food was left abandoned on the stove in her mad dash to the front door. _It has to be them, right? Please, just let it be them. _Pulling it open just enough for her to peek through with one eye, she found herself shaking almost too hard to manage it.

And there, coming through the front gate were Senpai and Rin, bickering loudly over something she couldn't hear. They still had all of their limbs and their heads, and they were both walking under their own power, so they must be okay, right?

They were okay. They were okay. She exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, then ran back to the kitchen. The stew simmered merrily; she hadn't let it burn in the few seconds she had left it alone. (She'd been worrying the food like it would all get destroyed if she weren't constantly messing with it.)

There was a mirror sheen on the counter, and she squinted into it. There wasn't much in the way of detail that she could see, but she could make out a few things that needed fixing. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly. _Inhale. Exhale. They don't need to see you like this._ Gently, she massaged her cheeks; she knew she'd gotten pale with worry, and this might bring some color back into them. Finally, the voices nearing the door, she wet her fingers and ran them through her hair, doing what she could to straighten it back out after the frantic cleaning had left it in slight disarray. _They're okay. They're okay. They don't need to know that you're not, because they need to be okay. _Her nerves crawled under her skin, and the relief she felt was intermingled with shame at her fear and her lack of trust and the tremor of fading adrenaline.

The sliding door clacked open, and she clasped her hands behind her back, put on her best welcoming smile, and turned to face them as they entered. "Welcome home," she said.

* * *

"Welcome home," Sakura said, cutting through their argument, and for a moment Shirou could almost pretend that everything was normal. How many times had he comes home to see that very same smile, full of warmth and quiet joy, waiting for him?

For the first time since leaving Tohsaka's house that morning, he almost felt safe. It wasn't that he expected Sakura to fight anyone who might attack; it was just so hard to imagine anything being so rude as to disrupt that peaceful image.

"What do you mean, _welcome home?" _Rin shouted.

_Well, maybe one person. _As Sakura shrank away, Shirou nudged Rin with a grimace. "Don't yell at Sakura just because you're mad at me."

Rin turned her furious gaze back to him, and Shirou made himself look her dead in the eye. After a moment, she sagged, closing her eyes with a sigh. "I don't have the energy for this anymore. You win. Whatever." She dragged herself over to the table, sat down on the floor, and rested her forehead on the wood.

"Um," Sakura ventured quietly. "Lunch will be ready soon, if you're hungry." She laced her fingers together before her, a nervous habit she fell into when she was feeling especially shy. "What happened, Senpai? Is everything okay?"

"Well," Shirou said, "we're still in one piece, so I guess it went okay." He walked to the kitchen and leaned back against the counter. Sakura drew closer, nervously, like a rabbit about to bolt. "Thanks for cooking, Sakura. You didn't have to do that for us."

She shook her head, and there was a small smile on her lips. "It's really nothing. You're letting me stay here, so I'm just doing my part, since I can't fight. I cleaned up a little, too."

Shirou grinned. "Well, you don't _have_ to do anything, but if you want to look at it that way, I guess it's okay." With a shrug, he rolled his neck. It popped more than usual. "We figured out that Caster and Saber are using the temple as—"

Her eyes widened. "There were _two_ Servants?"

"Yeah, and we all ended up fighting them," he said. They'd survived without any permanent damage, so he was pretty much done being bothered by the brush with death. "Well, Assassin didn't, but I told him not to."

Sakura frowned, and something hard flashed across her eyes, but her voice was as gentle as ever. "Isn't that a little irresponsible of him not to fight? You could have died."

Shirou shook his head, wondering whether Assassin was standing over them as they spoke. He probably was (Shirou could tell that he was near, now that he understood such a thing was possible, if not exactly where), but what he said was not just to placate him if so. "Actually, I think it was the opposite."

She tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

He scratched his chin idly, trying to figure out how to put it into words. "I told him to only come out if he thought there wasn't any hope otherwise. Even when things looked bad, he didn't show himself. He's not afraid of fighting, so I figure that means he must have trusted us to get through."

Sakura looked unconvinced; she hid that particular emotion poorly. As far as Shirou could guess, she nodded to keep from arguing any more, though."If you say so, then I'll believe you, Senpai." She went still, and Shirou blinked at her.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "What is it? Is there something on my face?"

With tender, gentle hands, she reached for him, and he was too surprised to back away before her fingertips were lightly brushing the skin on his throat. A sting accompanied the touch, but for some reason, he didn't want to move. "Your neck," she breathed. Her eyes were wide and concerned, her mouth slightly open in horror.

Shirou looked away, feeling his cheeks start to burn. "Yeah, uh, I got strangled a little is all. I'm okay, though." _What are you doing, idiot? Be normal._ But it was hard to be normal when she'd never exactly done this kind of thing before.

A moment later, Sakura seemed to realize what she was doing and pulled back, blushing furiously, her hands pressed to her mouth. "S-sorry, I just," she stammered. "It looked like it hurt is all, so I probably shouldn't have touched it, but—"

He shook his head. "No, its okay," he said stupidly. "It didn't really hurt any more than it already did." _Good going, Shirou, that'll set her at ease_.

As expected, she grew more flustered, not less. "I should get you something, I mean, to help you feel better, right? Maybe some painkillers or a compress... I shouldn't just reach out and poke it, and I'm sorry…"

"Oh my god, will you two just get a room?" Shirou and Sakura both jumped, having forgotten that she was still in the room, and turned to see Rin glaring at them with one eye through her hair, her head resting sideways on the table. "This is the most pathetic flirting I've ever seen, and I've been hit on by _Shinji_."

"We're not flirting!" they protested in unison, then looked at each other in surprise. Shirou's cheeks burned hotter just as Sakura's went an even deeper crimson.

Rin didn't dignify that with a response. "Don't burn the food," she said instead, turning her head to once again be face down. Sakura squeaked and turned back to the stove, hurriedly (and probably unnecessarily) stirring at the stew with a wooden spoon.

It didn't smell like it was burning.

Shirou rubbed his arm, searching desperately for something to say. "Tohsaka is mad because I didn't just tell Assassin to come out when Caster hit her with a spell, but she won't come out and say that."

"Am not," came Rin's muffled voice.

"I don't want to start this again," Shirou replied.

"Actually," Archer said, materializing just behind his Master, "she's mad because a Master as incompetent as you saved her life without using your Servant."

Rin groaned without looking up. "You freak out about a little girl, let Shirou fight a Servant by himself, don't say a word the whole way home, and this is how you choose to make your triumphant return?"

"That sounds about right," Shirou muttered. Archer shot him an infuriating smirk; looked like the bastard was back to being his normal self. _I guess I just haven't gotten over him wanting to kill me._

"What was that about, anyway?" Rin asked accusingly. "That was weird, even for you."

The images he'd seen flashed before his eyes again, and Shirou frowned. Archer's smirk turned into a look of warning, and Shirou shook his head. He wouldn't tell Rin if that was really what Archer wanted; it wasn't like he'd learned much specifically that wasn't obvious from Archer's reaction. He knew that Saber. The specific imagery didn't seem important.

Archer shrugged, even though Rin couldn't see him. "I don't want to kill a kid. I think I made that pretty clear."

Sakura's voice drifted from the stove; she wasn't facing them. "Did you… fight a child?"

"Yes," Shirou and Archer said at the same time Rin muttered, "Not a kid."

Sakura glanced at Shirou, frowning, and he shrugged uncomfortably. "Saber turned out to be younger than us, but she still tried to kill us. I don't think she wanted to hurt us, but she didn't have a choice."

"What makes you say that?" Sakura asked, Rin and Archer having begun arguing in quiet voices.

Shirou couldn't really pick out the specifics of their own personal little war, but then again, he really didn't want to. Talking to Sakura was easier than trying to figure out their weird dynamic, and besides, he'd been deeply bothered by what he'd seen.

That look of resigned sadness Saber had worn as she raised her sword against him hadn't faded, and it was all he could see in his mind after that question. Her sad eyes. Her tight mouth. Shirou told Sakura about the girl, focusing especially on the way she'd looked when Shirou had offered his meaningless help. "She told me that duty isn't something you get to ignore just because you don't like it," he finished.

He couldn't see Sakura's eyes, but she was silent as she poked away with the wooden spoon. Shirou thought he heard the spoon hit the bottom of the pan and scrape. He grimaced. "Do you believe that?" she asked quietly. He couldn't read her tone.

"Oh, um," Shirou said. "I guess… sort of? I guess it depends what you see your duty as. She seemed to think duty was about expectation. She needed to do what Caster wanted to her, whether she agreed with it or not."

Sakura's voice grew quieter, and he had to draw closer to hear her. She was going to turn the stew to mush at this rate. "What do you think duty is, Senpai?"

"I've never really thought about it specifically," he said, trying to ignore the familiar honeysuckle smell that clung to her, and how distracting and nice it was. He was still a good foot away from her; that wasn't a weird distance, was it? "I guess I think your duty is to follow whatever your ideals are. If someone wants to be a good person, but they do something bad because their boss tells them to, then I think that person is probably irresponsible." He didn't hold it against Saber. He really didn't. The poor girl had been young and inexperienced and two steps from broken.

Her head tilted so that he could barely see her eyes. Her face wore that carefully blank expression she got whenever she was trying to pretend she was okay when she really wasn't. "And what if you don't have any ideals, Senpai? What is your duty then?" She'd worn that expression a lot, when they'd first become friends. In contrast, her voice was almost quietly pleading.

"If…" Shirou looked at her. No, he didn't just look at her. He tried to understand her. Something was moving under the surface of his awareness, but he didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle to figure out what it was. _There are a lot of things I don't know about you, aren't there?_ he thought, not for the first time since she'd shown up at Tohsaka's the day before. Surprisingly, there was no sting of betrayal to it. He didn't know what her life was really like, and all he felt was a kind of aching sadness for reasons that he didn't entirely understand. He'd never asked more than she'd been happy to tell about her life outside of this house—outside of what she'd willingly offered up. He'd never thought he _needed_ to ask. "We're not talking about Saber anymore, are we?"

Sakura smiled then, embarrassed, and shook her head. "I'm just being silly, Senpai. Forget I said anything. Sometimes I just ask weird questions when I'm worried."

_The dreaming eye twitches, though the body knows not what it sees._

"Sakura…" What was there to say? What could he even ask? _Do you know about that disease your soul __**apparently**_ _has? _"Would you tell me if you felt… different?" He lowered his voice; for all his bluster, he didn't think he was ready to bring Tohsaka in on this, yet. His lips pressed together, suddenly afraid of what she might say.

"Different?" Sakura physically recoiled at the word, and his stomach collapsed into a black hole. _There's too much recognition there. Too much of a reaction. There's something. _"H-have I-"

Shirou shook his head vigorously. "Never mind, it was a silly question. You aren't acting different." That… wasn't entirely true, honestly, but he was beginning to realize that maybe Sakura had never stopped being the strangely hollow girl who had tended to him when he'd been injured. She seemed so much more… vulnerable.

For the first time since he'd left the house to find Caster, he remembered holding her, wrapping himself around her in a fit of protective passion, and embarrassment lanced through him. He'd been… presumptuous. Impulsive. She'd only returned the gesture of affection reluctantly, and when she finally did, she'd been shaking like a leaf in his arms. He must have upset her terribly.

He'd never known she'd be so small and warm.

He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word of apology out, Assassin beat him to the punch. "**Someone approaches."**

Archer stood, ramrod straight, from where he'd been kneeling to argue with Rin. His eyes were wide. "That presence…" Without another word, he faded away to nothing.

Rin leapt to her feet, shooting Shirou a meaningful glance, while he shared a surprised look with Sakura. "Go to the shed," he said calmly. "It's where you'll be safest while we deal with this."

"Not a lot of time, Shirou," Rin hissed, dashing over to the side of the room so that she wouldn't be visible from the door. "Get her out of here."

Sakura was frowning, but not in a way that suggested fear. "Wait, Senpai, I think…"

Shirou's bounded field around the property was weak, but an enemy should not have been able to breach it while he was home without triggering a quiet alarm. Either this enemy was head and shoulders more powerful than he or Rin, or…

"Oh no," he said. Rin shook her head and glared quizzically.

The worst possible scenario was here. A possibility so horrific that he'd refused to contemplate that it could happen at a time like this. The sliding door slammed open with a crash, and a deafening voice like a tiger roar filled the house. "**SHIROOOUUU! WHY WEREN'T YOU AT SCHOOL TODAY? IF YOU'RE NOT LYING IN BED DYING, YOU WILL BE SOON!"**

Rin looked shell-shocked. "Is that Ms. Fujimura?" she mouthed at him.

Shirou nodded like a man being marched to the guillotine.

* * *

Artoria Pendragon sat on her step, much the same as she had for the past month, dreading her Master's return.

Every day was the same as every other day. Every day, she sat here with her butt on the cold stone, gazing out at a wondrous city she'd never be able to visit. It was gleaming and beautiful, all iron and glass and bustling movement; nothing like the cities she remembered. She wondered what Kay would have thought about it all. Would he have been impressed? Jealous? Or even… Hell, she would even have taken Merlin's company at this point, as cryptic and obnoxious as the bastard was. He, at least, _had_ cared about her in his own way.

Merlin had probably seen all of this before, if all that nonsense he liked to spout about "living backwards" had meant anything at all. She wondered if he was here in this world somewhere, too. Did he know she was here? Would he recognize her?

It was all meaningless. Artoria had nothing to do but watch and to think.

She'd finally managed to earn a little of her foster brother's respect; no longer had she been just Wart, though she still thought of herself that way sometimes when she wasn't paying attention. She'd had dreams. She'd had a goal that meant more to her than anything else in all the world. She was the Knight Princess, the girl who would be king. And now…

What was she?

To call her a puppet, dancing on her Master's strings, would have been too generous. She wasn't allowed even that token amount of freedom, a pretty lie that she could tell herself to pretend she was her own person.

Her Master refused to tell her what had happened after Artoria's memories stopped, but she would say that Artoria had lived a full life, and that her current form was a result of an imperfect summoning. That comforted her a little; at least she had not been cruelly plucked from her own time before she could do what she was meant to. She had been king, and she had ruled.

She hoped she'd ruled well. She hoped that she didn't die filled with regret.

When would Caster return? Would she return? What would happen to Artoria if she didn't? She genuinely didn't know the answer to that question. Artoria had been summoned by Caster, but she was bound to and fueled by the leylines beneath her feet. It was possible she would disappear with Caster's death, but it was equally possible that she would simply remain here, even more alone, until one of the other Servants came to take pity on her and end her.

As horrific as that thought was, she wasn't sure it was worse than Caster remaining alive. Caster was… Artoria didn't know. She'd never understood anyone less than she understood her Master. (And she'd had to put up with _Merlin_, of all people.)

"_I ask of you," she asked in a solid voice. "Are you my Master?" _

_The woman in purple only smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Tell me your name." Her voice was smooth and deep, and it sent chills down Artoria's back._

_It brooked no dissent. "Artoria Pendragon," she said simply. "The future King of Britain." Not how she usually introduced herself, but the instinctual knowledge of her position had already filled her mind at the moment of her summoning._

"_Artoria Pendragon… The child." Caster looked at her for a long moment, then tilted her head slowly. "Interesting," she said softly. "So you have no memories?"_

_Artoria frowned. "I have memories."_

"_But none of your future. Interesting," she repeated, "but irrelevant. A tool does not require memories to be effective." That was the first moment that Artoria realized that she had not been summoned by a good person. "I will, of course, need you to swear a vow."_

"_A vow of fealty?" she asked skeptically._

"_Something of the sort," Caster said. "You see, I am no fool, and I will not be betrayed when you do not have the stomach for what must be done." _

_Artoria's blood ran cold._

_Not 'if,' but 'when.'_

"_A Command Seal is powerful," she continued, showing Artoria the sign on the back of her hand, "but ineffective over the long term. The more general the command, the weaker the compulsion. So I will not order you to be loyal with such." Caster stepped forward, inches from the line of the summoning circle. "A knight's word is her bond, correct?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Your honor will not allow you to break a promise. You will vow to serve me as you would your patron lord. You will fight and die for me, and my goals will be your goals."_

_Artoria felt as though she'd been thrown into a bottomless lake, her armor swiftly dragging her down into the cold black. "I cannot do that," she said, and she wondered if she sounded as childish as she felt. "I will not dirty myself with—"_

_Caster held up a hand, and Artoria's throat closed. Not with any sort of magic; Caster's commanding presence was just that powerful, and she was already off balance. "The summoning in itself is a contract, is it not? Would disobeying me not constitute a breach in that duty?"_

_Artoria didn't respond. She could no longer see the light from the surface. Everything was freezing blackness and crushing pressure._

"_Then such a vow would be a mere formality, would it not?" Caster knew she had trapped Artoria, and she was savoring it. "Surely you can show me enough respect to give it to my face."_

_Something was wrong with this woman, and now Artoria was having to do something she wasn't entirely certain about. She'd been so freshly summoned, and now this strange woman was asking her to do things in ways that made her stomach try to leave through her mouth. _

_Artoria grit her teeth, bile rising in her throat, and knelt._

Caster been cold and cruel from the start. Dismissive of Artoria's wishes, withholding of any sort of praise, occasionally outright derogatory. If that had been all, if the tenor of it all hadn't changed at all in the last month, Artoria would have been able to stomach it all. She'd have been miserable, but an abjectly cruel person, she could at least understand.

But as the weeks had gone on, Artoria had felt something change. The things she said didn't change. She didn't become a kinder person. But she would hesitate before the icy mask slipped over her face. Artoria would feel her eyes on the back of her head in the night. She'd even flinched once or twice when Artoria had been especially hurt by her words, and Artoria didn't know if _she_ had even noticed.

She'd called Artoria's request for food foolish, and then shared a pizza with her not four hours later. There was a part of Caster that didn't want to be cruel. There was a part of her that she had to suppress to be as cruel as she was, and it was getting harder for her.

That was frustrating. It made Artoria _angry._ If Caster wanted to be a good person, somewhere deep down, why didn't she allow herself to be one? Why all this effort and emotional self flagellation to contort herself into a caricature of an evil witch? Caster wasn't an evil person following her nature, Artoria was sure. Caster was forcing herself down the path she knew to be wrong, and that was something Artoria could not understand or forgive, no matter how she turned it over in her head. The fact that Artoria was her target was mostly immaterial.

Caster strode through the front gate in her casual outfit—jeans and a dark jacket, and Artoria stiffened. Her hands were in her pockets, and were it not for her ears barely poking out of her beautiful hair, she might have looked like anybody else on the street. Her face was absolutely neutral; Artoria had no indication of what to expect.

Would she be the Caster who had ridiculed her for wanting food, or would she be the Caster who had brought her a pizza to eat together in silence?

Slowly, Caster made her way up the steps, eyes directly ahead, not acknowledging Artoria at all. Her stomach twisted itself into a knot, waiting for the coming barb. She hadn't won a single fight since she'd been summoned. True, she'd never allowed anyone past who wasn't permitted, but she also made Caster do all the hard work herself. That should be enough to damn her in the strange woman's eyes.

Caster was silent as she passed. Artoria watched her, not wanting to break the silence, and relaxed when she had passed. The footsteps stopped. _Here it comes_, she thought tiredly. Had Caster seen some perceived insolence in her gaze? Hunching forward, she waited for the attack.

"You've done well, Artoria," Caster said.

"Thank you," she said automatically, irritated at the swell of pride that touched her heart at the words. _Now keep walking. We have nothing to say to each other._

But the footsteps didn't resume. Artoria twisted, glancing behind her, and she could have swore that for a moment, before the mask slid back over her features, Caster was looking at her with pride. It was gone as quickly as she had noticed it, and she wondered if it had been there at all. "I expect that this performance will continue," she said briskly.

Artoria smiled sadly, and nodded. "It will, Mistress. You can count on me."

Caster nodded jerkily. "Good. Now that I know that you are so capable, I expect great things from you." The footsteps resumed, briefly, but then came to an awkward halt again.

Artoria didn't say anything. Let _her_ take the initiative if she had something that she wanted to say so badly. A minute passed. Two. She traced a flock of birds in the air with her eyes, wishing that she too had the freedom to soar through the city below.

In the end, Caster kept whatever it was she wanted to say to herself, walking away without ever speaking another word.

It didn't occur to her until later that night that Caster had just used her name for the first time.

* * *

_Thanks for your patience, everyone! Unfortunately, after this first week of my new temporary job, I've had so little spare creative energy remaining that I've barely been able to write anything. I still have quite a large buffer, so we're not in danger of running dry, but it is looking very unlikely that I will go back to weekly posting until the end of my summer._

_For the thousandth time, thank you all for reading, and thank you for your wonderful comments. I do try to reply to them all, but this time it took me a while._

_See you in two weeks!_

_Next chapter: Unlimited Fuji-nee Works_


	18. Unlimited Fuji-nee Works

There was one thing that might save Shirou from being pounded into pulp by Fuji-nee's wooden sword collection, and that was Sakura's cooking. He held onto that with every last fiber of his being, and prepared for the storm.

The sound of an angry Taiga Fujimura was comparable to that of a jet engine, and today was no exception as she stormed the house. "SHIROU!" she howled again, coming in hot, homing in on him like some kind of heat-seeking missile. She skidded to a halt in front of him, and jammed an index finger into his face like an accusing god.

Shirou had the briefest moment to contemplate the sight he must make. He hadn't looked in a mirror since the fight, but if Sakura's reaction had been anything to go by, his neck was a frightful sight. Illya had healed the worst of the damage to his face, but his eye was still a little swollen, and a scrape still marred his cheek. His clothes still looked fairly clean, at least. He didn't know if he could suffer the indignity of still being covered in dirt and blood right now.

Sakura stood behind him, and he could imagine her projecting inner peace at him. She was so quiet, and she was easily startled, but she never seemed particularly perturbed by Fuji-nee's antics. She was solid bedrock, immune to the bringer of chaos before him. That image helped him keep his cool. "Uh, hi, Fuji—"

"Don't you 'hi Fuji-nee' me!" She shouted, and it was a wonder that the window over the sink didn't shatter from the sheer force of it. She hadn't noticed the state of his body, but that wasn't especially surprising. _You have tunnel vision, Fuji-nee…_ "You missed school today, and you didn't call out sick! I swear, this is why I need to come and check on you in the morning," she went on, shaking her head sadly. "You probably thought it was Sunday, _didn't you?"_

"Um," Sakura said from over his shoulder, and Taiga froze where she stood. The gears turned in her head, the little hamster wheel in her brain spinning uncontrollably as she put pieces together. "I can explain, Ms. Fujimura…"

Taiga didn't reply. She just stared. Something clicked, and her eyes first widened, then her face twisted into a knowing, catlike grin, and finally forced her expression into one of stern disappointment. "So this is what Shirou has been up to…" She couldn't quite keep the glee out of her voice.

Shirou glanced back at Sakura to see if _she_ knew what Taiga was on about, but Sakura had gone about as red as cooked lobster and (apparently) lost the ability to speak. "Fuji-nee, I don't know what you're implying, but I have a good excuse," he said, which wasn't true at all, and he hoped that she'd interrupt him to yell some more so he could have another minute to think.

Fuji-nee, always the agent of chaos, remained silent as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Well," he said slowly.

Taiga stared expectantly.

"You see," he said even more slowly. He could see Rin over Taiga's head, shoulders shaking with silent, barely contained laughter. He pleaded for help with his eyes, but she just laughed harder.

Taiga raised an eyebrow.

"The reason I'm home…" _Think, Shirou, think!_ But his head was empty. _Sakura was sick… no, that doesn't make any sense. I'm sick! No, she's already seen me, and I look healthy, apart from being beaten up. _How did people just lie at the drop of a hat like this? It was harder than he'd expected.

He glanced back at Sakura, who was continuing to fail to come to his aid; she was too busy staring very intently at the ground with crimson cheeks. She was usually the one who was good at defusing Fuji-nee when she got like this, and she was hanging them both out to dry.

"Shirou," Taiga said calmly. "As your teacher, I can't approve of this kind of irresponsible rendezvous." Was she trying not to smile? It looked like she was trying really hard not to smile.

He blinked. "Irresponsible… rendezvous?" _What does that even mean? I get being mad that we missed school, but this is ridiculous._

"But," she said loudly, then leaned forward and nudged his forearm with her fist. "As your beloved Fuji-nee…" She _winked_ at Shirou, and he flinched as she leaned in to stage-whisper. "It's about time."

Sakura made a choking noise, and Rin looked like a blood vessel was about to burst in her face from the sheer effort of keeping her laughter silent.

Shirou wished he understood what was so funny.

"I'll have to assign detention, of course," Taiga mused, rubbing her chin, looking more conflicted than Shirou had ever seen her. "And Sakura, I'll have to talk to your homeroom teacher…" Her eyes narrowed. "Sakura. Was Shirou a gentleman?"

Sakura made another sound that sounded like she'd swallowed her tongue. Behind Taiga, he watched Rin slowly compose herself, forcing the laughter down until she wore an expression of perfect serenity. She inhaled silently, exhaled. "Actually, Shirou being a gentleman is why we're here," she finally said, swooping in like their collective knight in shining armor.

Taiga glanced back at Rin, frowned, and turned back to Shirou and Sakura. "Miss Tohsaka, now isn't the time to—"

The color drained from her face.

As stiff as a corpse with rigor mortis, she turned back to look at Rin, who was smiling politely. She turned back to Shirou and Sakura. Back to Rin. Back to them.

This wasn't going to be great.

"**WHAT KIND OF HAREM ANIME IS THIS, SHIROUUU?"** she wailed, uppercutting Shirou in the chin with a closed fist and the full force of two decades of martial arts training. Pain flashed through his face as his neck whipped backward with a wordless grunt, and he staggered backward, directly into Sakura.

Sakura squeaked out a panicked "Senpai!" and caught him under his arms, straining to keep him upright. It took a few seconds longer than it should have, but he got his feet under him without bowling poor Sakura onto the ground. The room spun. Feedback whined in his ears. _Great, more head trauma,_ he thought woozily. _Just what I needed._

"You've been corrupted!" Taiga sounded overwhelmed and angry and on the verge of tears as she yelled. "Your whole generation has been corrupted! This isn't what the little Shirou I raised would have done! I knew Kiritsugu was a bad influence, but this!"

Finally standing completely under his own power, Sakura's delicate hands removed themselves from his body, and the sudden absence felt strange. "Fuji-nee…" Talking made his jaw hurt even more, and he felt like he needed to make sure he still had all of his teeth. "I think you just broke a lot of laws with that punch…"

"And you've broken my heart as your Fuji-nee," she replied in a plaintive whine, flapping her arms like a particularly upset flightless bird. "When Issei made you watch that awful Magi Mari show, I knew that you wouldn't be the Shirou I raised you to be anymore…"

"You didn't raise me at all," he mumbled, rubbing his tender chin. "Stop saying that." Sakura shuffled nervously until she was standing where she could see his face, and he tried to give her a reassuring smile. Whatever face he _actually _made was somewhat less soothing than he intended, it seemed, as Sakura pressed her hands to her mouth in horror.

"How could you say something so cruel, Shirou?" Taiga asked him, tears in her eyes, as though she hadn't just decked him with everything she had.

"You've got the wrong idea, Ms. Fujimura," Rin said calmly, but even in his current state he could hear the edge of genuine dismay in her tone. _That's right, she isn't used to seeing Fuji-nee like this. _"You see, Emiya stayed home because he got badly hurt in a fight."

"A fight?" Taiga's upset morphed to concern, which then morphed back into anger. "What are you doing getting into fights, Shirou? I raised you better than—"

"Actually," Rin said, smoothly speaking over Taiga, who had no choice but to surrender to Rin's commanding presence. "Emiya got hurt because he was defending my honor." Taiga blinked, confused, her brain seemingly working in overdrive to parse this new explanation. "There was a foreigner who was harassing me at the store yesterday, and he came to my rescue."

Taiga frowned and looked at Shirou again, who was looking at Rin with his mouth open like a fish out of water over the easy lie. This time, she really looked, and noticed the bruises on Shirou's neck. She'd just barely missed punching them, and guilt flashed across her face. "Shirou…" She said quietly. "Is this true?"

Shirou didn't trust himself to speak and ruin the lie, so he just nodded.

"I didn't feel safe at home all by myself after that," Rin continued, "and Emiya was kind enough to offer me the guest room. I'm an upstanding student and a very good judge of character, you see, and I knew he wouldn't try anything inappropriate." She gave Taiga a respectful bow, inclining her head just enough to make it convincing. "If you're acting as his guardian, Ms. Fujimura, then I'm sorry that we didn't inform you."

Taiga looked like a trapped animal. "But! But Sakura!" She pointed at Sakura, like a little kid playing I Spy. "If all that's true, then why is Sakura—"

"I came over this morning like usual," Sakura said earnestly, turning to smile at Taiga, her worry wiped away completely, leaving only the kind of innocent sincerity that one just couldn't help but believe. Taiga flinched; Sakura's sweet and honest demeanor had done massive damage. "And when I saw what had happened to poor Senpai, I made him stay home. You know how he is when he gets sick or hurt, right, Ms. Fujimura?"

_That's devious, Sakura! _He expected lies from Rin, but he'd never realized Sakura could deceive so proficiently.

"Hmm…" Taiga hummed reluctantly, closing her eyes. "He tries to make it worse. That does sound like Shirou…" She was running out of ways to misinterpret the situation, and the unconscious part of her that enjoyed making a fuss could sense it.

Sakura nodded demurely. "I was afraid he'd hurt himself or try to come to school if I left him alone, so I had to be there to take care of him." She pressed an index finger to her chin and tilted her head, feigning confusion very convincingly. "Isn't it a good thing to help someone in need, Ms. Fujimura?"

If that look made Shirou's heart quaver, he could only imagine what it was doing to Fuji-nee, who saw Sakura as something like a little sister to protect. Indeed, she rocked back again with a grunt as Sakura scored a critical hit.

"And since he got hurt defending my honor," Rin said, dealing Taiga the finishing blow, "I just had to stay and help out. It was the least I could do, you see."

Taiga dropped to her knees, knuckles pressed against the cold floor, defeated. The mighty tiger had been slain.

Sakura leaned down to gently pat Taiga's head; statuesque, she didn't move. "Ms. Fujimura," she said gently. "I think the stew is ready, if you'd like some."

"I thought I smelled something good!" Taiga declared cheerfully, popping up and brushing herself off as though nothing at all had happened. "Thank you, Sakura! You're such a kind and considerate girl."

Shirou rubbed silently at his jaw.

* * *

Having suffered a crushing defeat, Ms. Fujimura was surprisingly normal as they ate. It was sort of a weird time to eat, but Sakura had started cooking at a weird time. Not quite dinner, not quite lunch. Senpai and Rin, at least, hadn't eaten beforehand, but Ms. Fujimura had insisted that she was still stuffed from a big lunch, said she'd just have a bite to be polite, and then ate two and a half bowls full of stew.

"That was really good," she sighed, pressing her cheek onto the table so hard and relaxing so deeply that that it looked like her face was melting into a contented puddle. "But is there a weird smell?"

Senpai had insisted that they allow him to clean up, so while he was washing dishes, Rin and Sakura exchanged a quizzical look. "Um," Sakura said, "a weird smell, Ms. Fujimura?"

The teacher nodded, squashing her face in new and interesting ways. "I've been smelling it since I walked in."

Sakura frowned. "I cleaned up a little, so you might be smelling the chemicals…" She didn't smell those anymore, though, and besides, would anyone call that a weird smell.

"Maybe it's not a smell," Ms. Fujimura said, rolling her face away from Sakura to look at Rin. "I feel cold, too. Is there a draft?"

Rin blinked sedately.

_Don't tell her about the broken window, _Sakura tried to communicate with her eyes.

"Not that I'm aware of," Rin said calmly. "I don't feel particularly cold."

"Hm…" Taiga looked unconvinced. "Shirou."

Senpai didn't respond; either he was still mad about being punched in the face, or he couldn't hear her over the sound of the sink. Sakura suspected the latter. Even when he was mad at Ms. Fujimura, he didn't usually give her the silent treatment.

"Shirouuuuu." Her voice had taken on the kind of whine she got when she felt like she wasn't getting enough attention. Sakura couldn't help but smile at that.

Again, the thought came unbidden to her mind: _Could this be the new normal? _For a moment, she allowed herself to get lost in an indulgent fantasy wherein she and Rin and Ms. Fujimura and Senpai all spent time together like this; cooking and laughing at Ms. Fujimura's ruckuses and just… feeling content.

There had been a part of her that had always been afraid of any kind of change; that anything that might potentially disrupt the equilibrium the three of them had built was a threat to the one part of her life that was genuinely peaceful. But now, with Tohsaka-senpai here with them, someone who should have been an intruder felt instead like… if not family, then an old friend.

It was strange. It was a warm feeling.

She didn't have a lot of those anymore, so she treasured them where she could find them.

As if to intentionally interrupt her pleasant reverie, Ms. Fujimura broke the silence with an ear-piercing shout. "SHIROU!"

All three of them jumped; Sakura covered her ears with a wince, while Senpai whirled as if the noise had been a gunshot. Suds dripped off the bowl in his hand as he started as Ms. Fujimura, his mouth agape. "What is it, Fuji-nee?" He asked incredulously.

"Do you have ghosts?" she asked, as if this were a perfectly reasonable thing to ask someone. "I figured it out. It's not a bad smell or a draft. It's evil spirits."

"Evil… spirits…" Senpai said, and Sakura could tell exactly what he was thinking — there was absolutely a new evil spirit in the house since the last time Ms. Fujimura had been here, and he was struggling to come up with a convincing lie when a simple "of course not" would do.

Sakura giggled — she was pretty good at faking those — and touched Ms. Fujimura's shoulder. "Of course not, Ms. Fujimura," she said gently. "No ghosts, no evil spirits, not even a mischievous yokai."

Again, she looked unconvinced. She sat up, peering suspiciously around the room. "I have very powerful intuition, Sakura, so I'm not surprised you don't sense such a malevolent presence…" She rubbed at her chin. "Hmm… Now that I know what it is, it seems pretty serious…"

A single glance at Rin screamed that she desperately wanted to break out of her poised and proper image to join in teasing Ms. Fujimura, but that she was too invested in the way she was perceived at school to do so. "Do you have a lot of experience with evil spirits, Ms. Fujimura?"

Taiga nodded seriously. "In my day," she said proudly, "I was an amateur ghost hunter."

"In your day?" Senpai asked, having gone back to the dishes to avoid having to lie to her face. "You're not that much older than we are."

"Respect your elders, brat," Ms. Fujimura said without any ill intent. "Anyway, when I was in middle school, me and some other girls saw this really cool movie about fighting ghosts, and we opened up a supernatural investigations agency out of a stand in my backyard. It's very normal."

"Fuji-nee, I think most kids just sell lemonade out of a stand," Senpai interjected tiredly. "And besides, you told us this story a couple weeks ago."

"But Shirouuu, lemonade is boring, and ghost are cool and scary! Besides, Ms. Tohsaka didn't get to hear about it," she pouted.

"Tohsaka doesn't want to-"

"Actually, I would like to hear about your agency, Ms. Fujimura," Rin said, smiling sweetly at Senpai.

"We never busted any ghosts, but we did a lot of research, just in case we got a client. I know all about evil presences. And this…" She crossed her arms over her chest, blew a breath out her nose, and nodded. "Is evil."

"I'm sorry," Rin said, "but evil how?"

"How should I know?" Ms. Fujimura whined. "Evil is evil! It feels evil! This cold, shivery feeling means ghosts!"

Rin and Sakura exchanged another meaningful glance. Rin mouthed "_Assassin?" _at her.

Sakura shrugged nervously.

"_We need to get her out of here."_

Sakura shook her head. Rin gave her a blank look. In reply, Sakura just gave her a tired smile. The truth was, the last few days had been emotionally exhausting, even by her standards, and having Ms. Fujimura's uncomplicated complications around actually felt like a kind of stress relief. Like the sleepovers she'd heard that some girls held after the tension of a big test.

Ms. Fujimura had obliviously launched into a diatribe about how ghosts were attracted to inappropriate behavior, not that she was saying Shirou and Rin and Sakura were up to anything inappropriate, but just in _case_ the thought had entered any of their minds ("_Shirou," _she said pointedly), she was just so worried that even more evil spirits would appear.

"Unless…" She froze mid-stream-of-consciousness. "There is one other thing that could cause so malevolent an aura…"

Sakura reached out and touched Ms. Fujimura's wrist. "We're okay. I promise." It was about as true as it ever was, and besides; she was pretty good at lying about things being okay when they weren't.

Her eyes narrowed, not having seemed to have noticed Sakura at all. "Shirou. Have you done something bad?"

"Bad?" Rin asked. "I thought we established that-"

"Shirou." Ms. Fujimura's eyes had turned cold. It was a bizarre look on her. "If you need to hide a body, just let your Fuji-nee know. She can help."

Rin's perfect mask cracked, and she choked with laughter.

Ms. Fujimura continued seriously, not knowing or not caring about the laughter. "If my little Shirou is a killer now, then I'll just have to make a few calls, and everything will dis—"

Senpai, returning from the kitchen, threw the damp dish towel at Ms. Fujimura's face. It wrapped around her with a wet _slap,_ and she made a weird gobbling noise as she flailed to pull it off. "You're letting your imagination run away with you," he said calmly.

Fuji-nee just whimpered.

Senpai looked down on her with dispassionate, unsympathetic eyes.

Sakura had always been a little bit envious of their relationship. They bickered constantly, made fun of the other at every opportunity, complained incessantly, and yet… They loved each other. Nothing they said to each other stung, because none of it was meant venomously, and their care for each other as strange siblings ran deep. It had taken a long time for Sakura to understand that. She had spent a lot of time being teased by people she should have trusted, and none of it had been so playful or so meaningless. More than once, in those first few weeks, she had bottled up her anger at Ms. Fujimura's conduct; without context, without knowledge of anything different, it had looked indistinguishable from her own treatment. Now that she'd spent so much time with them, though, it was almost peaceful.

No. Not 'almost.'

"Shirou, I'm just looking out for you," Ms. Fujimura said. "You don't tell me anything." That wasn't true and everyone there (well, maybe not Rin) knew it. Ms. Fujimura could be incredibly charming, but she lost every last scrap of dignity she had whenever she walked through Senpai's front door.

"I wouldn't tell you if I killed someone, idiot," Senpai said as he finally sat, shaking his head. "You'd disown me."

Ms. Fujimura frowned. "That's not true. I know a lot of scary people."

Rin was just kind of smiling meaninglessly; it was the kind of smile you wore when you wandered into something that felt like none of your business, but where leaving would be rude. _Be strong, Tohsaka-senpai, _she thought, trying to send good vibes. _It'll be over soon._

* * *

It was not over soon.

It would never be over.

Though Rin had never personally had the dubious pleasure of taking a class with her, Taiga Fujimura was well known throughout the student body as eccentric; she was loud, she was brash, she was childish. She didn't have the nickname "Tiger Fujimura" for nothing, after all. There were whispers that she'd once challenged a particularly stubborn problem student to a sword fight in a fit of frustrated passion, and then accidentally killed him in a single blow. Both the fact that there hadn't been any suspicious student deaths in the couple years Taiga had been there and the lack of any identifying details were irrelevant to the rumor mill. Rin, of course, had never believed such a ridiculous story. The idea was laughable.

Now, though, she wasn't so sure.

Every eccentric thing people said about her seemed magnified a thousandfold. She cried at the drop of a hat, and she jumped to conclusions, and she teased Shirou mercilessly. Surely such a creature could not be a _teacher._ She was like a little kid. She was irritating. She was abrasive in a way Rin wasn't used to. None of that stopped her from liking the woman almost immediately.

Whether or not Taiga Fujimura was a good person was not the issue. The issue was that, well…

"Of course I'm staying," Taiga trumpeted definitively. "I just can't allow these two poor girls to be burdened with taking care of you all by themselves." The sun was setting, and Taiga simply would not leave, no matter how politely Shirou implied that she should.

Shirou groaned heavily. "Fuji-nee, I already have enough nurses to take care of me. I don't need one who'll probably poison me trying to brew a cup of tea."

Rather than responding to the jab, Taiga focused in on something else with laser precision. "Oh, I see, I see," she said, nodding thoughtfully. "So Shirou is into nurse fantasies…"

Sakura blushed and choked on a sip of tea; she seemed _very _easily flustered by Taiga. Even her coughing was polite and restrained; it also made for a fairly good cover for the red face. Rin could see exactly what was going on there, though, even if those two knuckleheads couldn't.

Rin, meanwhile, was absolutely living. She was exhausted and irritated and ready to talk about things that mattered again, but this was priceless. She watched the back and forth with barely restrained glee. She hadn't yet dropped the mask of the perfect, elite honor student, but she had allowed it to loosen a little. "I never knew Emiya was so perverse," she said, feigning mild horror.

With a look as though she and Taiga were plotting to knife him in the back right before his eyes, Shirou shook his head frantically. "Fuji-nee, don't twist my words. You're going to give Sakura the wrong idea."

Rin's grin widened. "Are you saying that I already have the wrong idea, Emiya?" She laced her hands, ladylike, on the table before her. "Or am I just the one with the right idea, and you want to throw me off? I did have my suspicions."

Sakura laughed quietly. "Senpai doesn't play mind games like that, Tohsaka-senpai."

Taiga nodded in assent. "You can't be too clever with Shirou," she said sadly. "It's no fun, because he doesn't understand. He just gets confused if he has to think too hard."

"You're confused all the time, Fuji-nee," he said levelly.

"Everybody's confused all the time," she said brightly. "Some people just pretend they're not better than other people."

"You're a _teacher_," Shirou said incredulously.

"I bet Tohsaka-senpai doesn't get confused very often," Sakura said earnestly.

Rin thought back to her lingering bewilderment about everything having to do with Assassin, and the way the world had stopped making sense about two days back. "That's true," she said.

"_Anyway,_" Shirou said, desperation straining his voice, "please just trust me, Fuji-nee. Nothing weird will happen."

"If it makes you feel any better, Ms. Fujimura," Rin said pleasantly, "I have a boyfriend already. You don't think I would be so low as to be unfaithful, do you?"

The look of absolute bewilderment on Shirou's face was comical, but he threatened to topple her carefully aimed lie. _Do not say a single word,_ she thought at him, giving him the most terrifyingly sweet smile she could imagine. _Just go with it._

He flinched, but kept his mouth shut, and Taiga didn't seem to have noticed. "Hmmm…" She grumbled skeptically. "What's he like?"

_We can play this game if you want._ "Oh, you know. Tall. Dark. Handsome. Big bulging muscles." She sighed girlishly, pressing her hands to her chest as if caught in the throes of romance. "He's so very sweet, you see."

"Yeah," Shirou said unconvincingly. "Tohsaka showed me pictures. He's got, uh, tan skin…. kind of grumpy…"

_Stop helping, you idiot, you're making me look like a liar._ Which she was.

Shirou didn't know when to stop. "He's um… white hair? Really tall?"

_Oh my god, is Archer literally the only other man you can picture? _This was unbelievable. Taiga was growing suspicious; Rin could see it in the narrowed eyes and deepening frown. She had to step up her game to cancel out how fucking bad at lying to Taiga Shirou was.

Sakura actually came to the rescue. Shirou was inherently untrustworthy about such things to Taiga, Rin could see, but Sakura was much more believable. "Oh, Ms. Fujimura, he's _very _handsome," she lied effortlessly, sighing in a mirror of Rin's own a moment before. "I met him once. I only wish I could ever be so lucky as Tohsaka-senpai..."

Shirou looked genuinely jealous of the fake Archer-boyfriend they had constructed, his face all scrunched up like a newborn pug. That was beyond stupid, but it helped sell it, so she wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Taiga studied the jealousy on Shirou's face like a scientist examining a butterfly pinned to a board, thoughtful, then smiled knowingly and nodded. "I see, I see. Okay, okay. I trust that Tohsaka won't let you do anything weird to her."

"You're the one with perversion on the brain!" Shirou protested, but Taiga was having none of it.

"I suppose it isn't your _whole_ generation that's been corrupted," she sighed wistfully. "At least some young people these days are still trustworthy."

Rin and Sakura both smiled understandingly at Taiga, while Shirou sputtered incoherently. "You can count on us, Ms. Fujimura!" Sakura chirped.

Now that that was settled, Rin was absolutely positive that Taiga _had_ to be about to leave. She just had to, right?

Nope.

Taiga lingered another _hour_ after that before Shirou was able to successfully eject her from the house. "I'll get in touch with an exorcist," she called over her shoulder, before swinging her leg onto her motorcycle and roaring away.

Rin, watching her drive off, felt drained. "How do you two do this every day?" she asked, sagging pathetically.

Shirou and Sakura looked at her as one, and, infuriatingly, they didn't look worn out at all. "Well, it's not _every_ day," Sakura said, as if that somehow made it better.

"It's just Fuji-nee," Shirou added. The bastard almost sounded _chipper_. Like he had been _energized_ by that whole ordeal. "She's pretty easy to deal with once you get used to her."

Rin grumbled something wordless, then turned back to the house. "I liked her, but that was _so much_."

"Yeah," Shirou said with a laugh. "Anyway, what's your plan?"

She glowered at him. "My plan?"

He nodded. "To fix my magic."

_I forgot all about that._ She was so tired. "Can't we do it in the morning?"

"Tohsaka-senpai," Sakura said hesitantly. "Are you sure that we should wait? Senpai will be a lot safer if Assassin can help more."

Rin groaned, and she imagined the Earth shaking with the force of it. "Fine. Fine! We'll open your circuits. Go to your room, and I'll be in there in a minute. Like I said. Preparations. I couldn't do that with her there."

Suddenly, there was a stubborn set to Sakura's jaw that Rin wasn't a fan of. "Tohsaka-senpai, you still didn't tell us what you're planning…"

Shirou nodded firmly, though he and Sakura didn't exactly seem to be on the same wavelength. "Yeah, does it have to be in my room? Anything you do to fix me, I don't mind if Sakura's there."

"Fine, that's your funeral," Rin said. She even sounded exhausted to herself. "We can have an audience if you're so afraid to be alone in a room with me. It'll definitely be embarrassing, though."

* * *

My working title for this chapter was something along the lines of "SOME LEVITY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD." Y'all are going to need it for what's coming.

C:

Thanks as always to all of my readers and commenters, and the next one will be posted, again, in two weeks!

Next chapter: The Queen's Favor


	19. The Queen's Favor

The church looked cheap in the evening light.

Everything from this age looked cheap to her though, Medb thought as she peered out of her carriage, so she couldn't exactly blame the church. It was just a sign of the sad state of the times, she supposed. Everything these days was so shoddy and gaudy in a way that she did not at _all_ appreciate. That stained glass was _tacky_, though. She leaned back, and the leather seat creaked wonderfully beneath her. "Make sure it's safe," she commanded.

Her footstool jumped and wrung his hands, eyes flickering from her to the carriage door with unconcealed fear. "D-do you think it'll be dangerous?" he stuttered pathetically, cringing at the blow that was no doubt coming for such insolence. His face was getting paler with every passing day, and each shower she made him take only seemed to _add_ to the grease that was all but dripping off of his sad, limp hair. Some men grew strong through hardship. Others collapsed like a house of cards at a slight breeze. She couldn't stand that kind of guy."I thought we w-were just kidnapping the priest. How dangerous could he b-be, compared to you?"

"It doesn't matter," she said idly. "It's your job to make sure the coast is clear." When no violence seemed to be forthcoming, he relaxed, and _that _was when she cracked him across the greasy face with her crop. He squealed, clutching his face, and toppled backward so hard that he banged the back of his skull on the frosted glass she'd had inset into the carriage's side. "Do not break my window," she growled. It hadn't cracked, but it _could_ have, and she did not take the destruction of her property well.

Another unsightly, dripping red line having joined the rest of the scabs on his face, he clawed desperately at the door. It surprised him when it burst open, and he spilled out onto the ground in a heap.

"Are you a mannequin, or are you a man?" she asked the tangle of limbs and slime below her. "You have a job to do."

With a squeak, he scrambled to his feet and whipped his head from side to side, turning all around to survey the area. Medb knew he would never actually find anything dangerous, as incompetent and self-centered as he was. It was mostly because she liked to kick him around. A show of dominance, because it was fun, and she was bored. The nerve of this boy to ever think she would call him _master_, capital-letter M or not_._ He turned his shaking, greyish face back to her and nodded anxiously. "I-it's clear."

"I'm sorry?" She said dismissively, plucking at one of her white gloves with her other hand. "I couldn't quite hear you."

A flash of anger roared across his face before he remembered to be afraid. That was interesting. She thought she'd beaten that out of him. He inclined his head, ostensibly out of respect, but mostly to hide the insubordinate look he couldn't quite wipe away. "It's clear, your majesty."

"Thank you," she replied haughtily, and scooted over to the entryway. He offered her a sweaty hand, and she took it and squeezed it hard enough that the bones creaked as she stepped down. The glove would need to be washed.

One of the great horned beasts pulling the carriage snorted and stomped, and she soothed it with an imperious brush of her hand atop its head. Even in this unfamiliar place, the animal knew where it belonged. That wasn't something she could say about many other entities she'd met since being summoned, and, not for the first time, she found herself glad that they'd made the trip through time and space alongside her.

She inclined her head toward the church. "Now get the door."

His head jerking from side to side like a panicked animal, he ran to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open. She planted her hand on his shoulder and shoved him off to the side. As he tumbled to the ground once again looking much more pathetic than usual, she stepped into the doorframe. The church yawned open before her, a massive room just as worthless as the outside had been, and at the far end, standing ramrod straight at the podium, was the priest. He did not move, nor he did seem surprised to see her.

_So that's him, then?_ She looked him up and down, and she could feel his eyes doing the same to her. Let him look. She was proud of her body, and had nothing to hide. She brushed a bit of imaginary dirt off of her blinding white leather jacket, then carelessly adjusted her shades. With a wet _splat_, she spat her gum onto the floor, off to her left.

The priest smiled warmly, and inclined his head in greeting. "This is an unexpected pleasure, Rider," he said in an unsurprisingly deep voice. He sounded the way he looked.

_He can wait a second. _She tilted her head vaguely in her doormat's direction. "Now get back into the carriage so you don't get your fool head cut off. I can't win this whole thing if you're dead." The priest needed to know that she didn't respect him.

With an expression of boundless relief, her doormat scrambled back up into the carriage and slammed the door behind him. That was okay. She had bigger fish to fry, and it would be a pain if he got his stupid ass killed in the crossfire.

"What's up, holy man?" Medb called, letting the door slam shut behind her. It closed with an echoing crash. A sound of finality. The end of the priest's freedom. "You know why I'm here?"

"I confess, I do not," the priest said, though his words bubbled with hidden laughter. He was handsome, but he also seemed infuriating. If there was any strength to this man, she might enjoy breaking him. A poor substitute for certain other men kicking around, but he might do in a pinch. "Although I believe I can guess, Queen Medb. Did Zouken Matou send you to me? I did not expect you to be one to follow another's orders."

"Nobody sends me anywhere," she purred, walking to the center aisle, trailing her fingers along the edge of a pew. "He provided useful information, and I made a choice."

"I see, I see," the priest replied. "So that is how he is playing this war, then. That is interesting." He remained exactly where he was, hands clasped behind his back. The smile was at odds with the utter lifelessness in his eyes. It was a little unsettling, even to her.

"I don't really care about whatever you're saying," Medb said. Her delicate touch twisted into a claw, and her fingernails carved parallel wavering lines down the rich wood as she went. "I'm here for you, holy man. We can do this the fun and easy way, or the hard way." She smiled sweetly. "Which would you prefer?"

The priest chuckled. "Do you think I am the type of man to look a praying mantis in the eye and not expect it to follow its nature? I like my head where it is."

She blew him a slow kiss with her other hand. "Playing coy, then. I like that. The hard way might be fun after all."

"If you think you can kill me," he said idly. "You will find that more difficult than you may have bargained for, Queen Medb." She reached the aisle and stopped, facing him. "I may not be a Servant, such as yourself, but I am no helpless child." He raised his right hand, and she wondered whether or not there was a Command Seal upon it.

_Did that old bastard send me to fight a Master? If that's true, he could call his Servant at any time. Need to watch out for that. _But if he was going to be relaxed, so was she. She rocked back on her heels, idly playing with the end of her crop with her free hand. "I'm not here to kill you, holy man. We need you." That looked to genuinely catch the priest off guard. His eyes widened just a hair, and he lowered his hand, but those were the only tells he gave. "Interesting," she threw back. "So you thought you were gonna die, and you didn't run."

"I thought no such thing," he intoned. "Rather, I assumed you had come to me for forgiveness, as one of my flock." He sighed, drawing his other hand out into the open from behind his back. It was empty. "The stench of sin lies thick upon you, Queen Medb of Connacht. I do not know if our heavenly Father himself could ever wash its stain from your soul, but it is my obligation to try."

"Brave words," Medb said hotly. "We'll see how soon they turn to screams of terror when I come for you." Warmth burned in her fingertips and her chest, not unpleasantly. The tingle of anticipation that heralded approaching battle or sex. Both were exhilarating.

"More fearsome beings than you have tried to frighten me, girl," he said simply, maddeningly calm. "I am still here, and they are not."

"And scarier guys than you have thought they could escape me," she said with a grin that was just this side of feral. Yes, she thought she could enjoy this. "None of them did, in the end." Not _precisely_ true, but it had turned out that Cu could only avoid her so long, even through death.

"If I were to ask what Zouken Matou plans for me," the priest asked. "Would you tell me?"

"I might," Medb said with a shrug. "_If _you asked." _Imperious bastard. Who does this asshole think he is?_

The priest inclined his head again. "Fair enough, Queen of Connacht. What does Zouken Matou plan?"

She tapped her chin, more than a little sensual in her parody of deep thought. "Nah, I don't think I will tell you," she said, just to be spiteful. It didn't matter if the priest knew or not, but she didn't like him. "Not specifically, anyway. There's a ritual we're going to do, and we need an empty shell that's strong enough to take a little strain. You fit the bill."

The touch of a smirk twisted the priest's shitty little lips. "An empty vessel, is it?" The amusement in his voice sounded more genuine than anything else that he had said since Medb had arrived. "Is that what he thinks I am?"

"On this one, I'll defer to his advice," she said. "A queen knows when to heed her advisors, after all."

"Is that what you believe him to be?" That shit-eating grin hadn't left his lips. She wanted to break all those teeth. For a start. "An advisor?"

The embers of adrenaline in her chest sparked to life, the touches of warmth flaring into heat. Anger and hatred and bloodlust and regular lust. The way she always felt just before a fight. "Of course. He understands respect, and he has knowledge of the time and place that I simply don't possess. When one invades a foreign land, one must often employ a native guide."

The priest laughed.

Mocking her. Mocking _her_.

_Bastard_.

Fury burned in her chest, and for a long moment, the two of them simply watched each other. _Kill him. Kill him!_ The fire turned to white hot wrath, and she fanned the flames. She fought and fucked better when she was passionate. "_What's so funny?" _she hissed.

"Nothing, nothing," the priest said in a way that clearly meant something. "You're an excellent judge of character, Queen Medb. That is all."

_Piece of shit bastard. You don't know your place._

_But you __**will.**_

His laughter died, and he went still, though the ghost of a smile still lingered on his lips. "Shall we begin?" the priest said, as though asking his congregation to join him in prayer, and in his left hand appeared two swords, held between his fingers. His arm blurred as he exploded into motion, dipping to the left, and the swords shot through the air like bullets.

Her response was immediate; her crop swept out and swatted the weapons away as they approached, like the annoying gnats they were. She launched forward, feet pounding on the luxurious rug beneath, tearing after the clearly terrified priest.

A whistle as two more swords shot toward her, another _clinkclink _as she deflected them. She closed the gap, and as he turned to swing again she saw no fear, only cold determination.

Her crop cracked against another sword, this one held fast in his hand, then again and again as he tried twice more, then barely parried her own swipe. "Oh," she said sweetly. "You blocked my attacks. So you're fast, for a human. I'll give you that much." _Crack crack crack._ The sword went spinning out of his hand, and as it clattered to the ground he met her crop with one held in the other. She danced back, frowning. "How many of those do you have?"

"As many as I need," he said, then lunged forward. The sword in his left hand swiped at her head and at her arms and at her gut, and she knocked each away without much effort. This _was _child's play. Her crop drew blood from his face, and he turned to run—

But instead of fleeing to the door, he leapt at the wall and climbed it faster than she'd have given him credit for. A sword screamed toward her, and as she twisted out of its way, he was in midair, midflip, and another sword thundered down at the place she'd be. That one came close, but again, she knocked it out of the air without much trouble. He landed behind her, and she whipped around to face him.

She feigned a yawn as she deflected another swipe. "Is that the best you've-"

Before the words were out of her mouth, three black swords appeared in his right, and he dispassionately stabbed upward at her. She jerked her head back before they could skewer her brain, startled, and three lines of fire traced burning furrows down her face as the blades passed much too close for comfort. She grunted, her crop slapping the claws away, but the priest used the distraction expertly. The sword in his left became three, and with the force of an onrushing cavalry charge, stabbed deep into her gut, three points of agony lancing through her as their points tore through her body and her jacket. All three points exited through her back.

She did not scream; rather, with her free hand, she lashed out with a closed fist, taking the priest in the jaw. As he staggered back, she retreated as well, yanking the three swords free. "You dare," she hissed through clenched teeth, feeling the blood run down her face and lower body. "You dare pierce _me?_"

Kirei's face had lost even the small bit of passion he'd possessed during their banter. He simply wasn't wasting energy on it. Every move was considered and methodical, she realized now, and he was not to be underestimated. His trump card had been played, and he no longer had the element of surprise on his side. Swords bristled out of both closed fists. He assumed a ready position, all six weapons gleaming and aimed straight for her.

He was dangerous. She saw that now. And he would pay for his hubris.

Her fingers danced, the swords she'd ripped out of herself spun, and her left hand became a mirror of his, triplet blades like wickedly sharp claws, her crop gripped tight in her right. Blood ran into her mouth, and she relished the taste as she spat. "You're the first one to truly lay a finger on me in this war, holy man," she said, the humor gone from her voice. "I commend you." The wrath burned hotter and hotter, and she luxuriated in the flames.

Kirei stood as still as a statue, ready.

"You really are that dead inside, aren't you?" she mocked, tapping her crop on the ground. "You've done something few people have, and you don't feel a single thing? Not fear, not the thrill of battle, not the lust for blood. That's pathetic. It's laughable. No wonder the old man needs you for this. With such an empty shell of a host—"

The priest's expression never changed, but he came at her again, swiping both hands in a pincer attack. Now that she knew to expect multipronged attacks, though, parrying was child's play. He moved like lightning, attacking from every angle at once, hammering on her defenses, wearing her down.

At least that was the idea. If she'd been a human, with human reflexes and human endurance, he might have stood a chance. Echoing, sparking metal clashing on metal filled the church. His expression never changed. Pain pounded in time with her heartbeat. She was no longer smiling. The ground under them became slick with blood.

He'd try to run, to create distance, but she wouldn't allow it. He was most confident at range, and so she would stay close. Even wounded, she was faster than him. A human could never fight a heroic spirit and win.

He danced backward, and she pressed the attack, moving onto the offensive. He blocked everything, but she could see the way sweat beaded on his brow, the way the tips of the blades had begun to shake.

A simultaneous attack, a simultaneous parry, and she lashed out with one pointed heel. It took the priest in the chest, and he stumbled back again — but this time his back hit the wall. The disorientation was enough. Her crop cracked against his face three times, and as she saw his vision waver with the force and intensity of the pain, she lashed out with the swords that were still covered in her own blood. They were sharp, she had to give the priest credit for that; they barely slowed as they sheared through his right elbow.

Blood sprayed her as the hand, still connected to the forearm, dropped to the ground, splattering her jacket and her face and her aviators as he recoiled in pain and shock. The blood was hot and wet and smelled of iron, and it made her feel _alive._ Even he couldn't remain completely blasé to such a thing, she thought as she wiped the smears from the glasses, and yet… when she could see clearly again, his expression hadn't changed. That cooled her passion a little. The satisfaction began to fade. "Why don't you feel something?" she asked softly.

Instead, he took another swing with his one remaining hand, and she deflected the assault with her crop. His face was _still lifeless,_ and she could not let that stand. "Feel something!" she commanded, louder, and he didn't react. There was no victory if there was no submission!

Parry. Twist. The crop hit him in the sensitive veins under his wrist, and his fingers spasmed, the blades falling free. "_Feel something!" _she roared, and drove all three blades through the arm and into the stone wall behind. They pierced to the hilt, the sturdy walls behind cracking under the sheer force of the attack. She let him hang.

His face remained impassive.

With one foot, she kicked one of the fallen blades up into the air and caught it by the hilt, and in one fluid motion pinned what was left of his other arm to the wall as well, skewering him just below the shoulder. Blood continued to pump from his stump, to dribble from every place he was nailed to the wall; his face was going pale, but still, he didn't scream or grimace. Not even a twitch of genuine emotion.

"I've beaten you!" she screamed, bloody spit flecking his face. "You're cut to pieces! You're going to be used in a ritual that you know nothing about! _Why aren't you afraid?" _She ripped the aviators from her face and threw them away; the sound of glass breaking and their heavy breathing were the only sounds in the church.

"Fear," he said, his breath slightly labored, "is for fools and cowards."

She hit him. His head whipped back and cracked against the unforgiving stone, and the violence of the blow made the blades in his arms cut deeper still. He grunted, but nothing more.

He opened his eyes and met her gaze, as if they were _equals_. "You were stronger than me." Even his voice was unemotional.

She hit him again.

"I'm in your power." Finally, he did smile, but it was a cruel, mocking one that almost blanked her mind with sheer hatred. His cheek was swelling, and blood poured from his nose, the cartilage shattered into a twisted pulp.

This time, she drove a heel into his gut, and he doubled over as much as he could with his arms pinned and bleeding. Blood dribbled from his lips.

"You're blinded by your passion, Queen Medb," he choked out, head hanging heavily, blood and sweat plastering his hair to his scalp. "You came here for a purpose. Do you intend to simply let me bleed to death, to return to your master empty handed?" How a person impaled four times and dismembered could look so in-control of a situation, she didn't understand. He laughed, then. Laughed in her face. Laughed at _her._

With a roar of wordless anger, she formed a complex sign in the air. Runes were not her forté, but she knew a little. Not enough to be useful in combat, but enough for this. Precision was out of the question, of course, though to be precise would be to show mercy, and the very idea of showing _him _mercy was _funny_. The wild blast of fire that filled the air in a barely-controlled jet cauterized the priest's stump in an instant, but she didn't let up until the end of his arm crackled and burned black, until the smell of charred meat filled the air, until the priest actually screamed at this fresh agony. There wasn't much in this world that hurt more than flame. The sleeve of his robe caught fire almost instantly, burning and fusing to his skin, and she did not immediately move to put it out.

The fire went out on its own. She stood before him, panting (but not with effort), forcing composure onto herself. Calm descended upon her like smothering night over a desolate field. She shivered, not unpleasantly.

Medb smiled a sweet, blood-drenched smile. "We only need you alive," she said. "The old man said the ritual would take care of the rest." The priest's face had gone as grey as the stone he was skewered to, and she ran her fingers gingerly over his face. He'd composed himself, but if he cracked once, he could crack again. She snapped her fingers, and moments later, her beasts of burden crashed through the doorway that was too small for them, showering the far end of the church with broken stone and shattered wood as they dragged her carriage indoors. "We'll see what it takes to make you afraid. It'll be fun." Like an old lover, she pressed her bloody forehead to his, smearing their commingled blood on his face as she did, and he didn't have the strength to twist away. "We'll learn your limits together."

Once more, impossibly, the priest began to laugh.

* * *

_Sometimes I worry that people will think I write Medb the way I do because I don't like her. I LOVE her, and somehow she ended up being the scariest character in the whole damn fic._

_Thanks to all the readers and reviewers! C:_

_Next chapter: Can't Go Home Again_


	20. Can't Go Home Again

The past was the past, and it should stay the past.

For Archer to think such a thing was the height of hypocrisy, but when hypocrisy was all you had left to your name, it became as valuable as love. He didn't want to see Taiga Fujimura. Being incorporeal didn't stop you from feeling, merciful as that might have been, and it didn't stop his chest from turning into lead at the sound of her voice.

How strange it was that of all the things he saw, unchanged, like ghosts in a faded photograph, Fuji-nee should be the one thing he couldn't bear. He didn't wait for her to enter. He didn't want to see her.

The aching sense of loss was too much.

He went to his old bedroom. It held no real meaning to him anymore, so it was a safe place to hide from the melancholy. It had always been a place to sleep, and nothing more. An empty room. An empty futon in the center of the empty floor. An old alarm clock, its wire trailing forlornly to the wall socket. Nothing the boy cared for. Nothing he wanted to remember. No passions or secrets or… anything. There was nothing.

It turned out this room _did_ make him feel something. Resentment. Resentment for the stupid boy who had thought he could save the world without saving himself first.

When you resented a past that you couldn't change… What other word for it was better than regret?

Even in this phantom world, that hadn't changed. The emptiness. The illusion of personhood. There really was no other path for Shirou Emiya, was there? He was allowed no other end than to break against the uncaring stone of his ideal.

He didn't want to be here, either.

He went to the roof instead. That wasn't a place he'd ever spent much time, so it held no nostalgia for him. With a silent sigh, he sat upon the tile, leaning back on one hand, staring out at what of Fuyuki he could see. It wasn't much. The neighborhood, and the heights of the city proper in the distance. It was like a metaphor for looking back on his past; it was there, somewhere, but so much of it was obscured. Out of reach. Only the heights remained.

Time didn't mean anything to a Guardian, but somehow, it still meant everything.

"**Thou art melancholy,"** an unwelcome voice said, surprisingly soft. It wouldn't carry down into the house.

"No shit, bones," he sighed. "You knew, didn't you? Right away?"

"**I suspected."**

"Is that why you haven't killed me?" he asked wryly. "Vicarious loyalty, or something?" The sun blazed overhead. He wished he could feel it, but to materialize wouldn't do him any good.

"**Nothing so indirect,"** Assassin said. "**We have entered into a truce, have we not? I will not kill an ally without provocation."**

"Honor," he spat. "Like I told you that night. Honor's an excuse."

"**Honor is all we have," **Assassin said simply. "**The code we live by. We do not own our possessions. We do not own our loved ones. We do not own our positions or our titles. When our time comes, our ideals are all we carry with us. We will be judged by how true to ourselves we were."**

Archer grit his incorporeal teeth. "You sound like him already."

"**Perhaps he merely sounds like me,"** Assassin replied, not without irony. "**They say there is always a connection between Master and Servant, do they not? Shirou Emiya will follow the path he believes will lead to salvation for those around him until there is nothing left of him but the will to make that ideal reality."**

Archer didn't respond.

"**I know something of that, myself." **Assassin almost sounded melancholic himself. "**I was a man, once. I had a name, and a face, and a home. I do not regret what I have become. I will never regret the path I have taken. But even I wonder what might have become of me if I had been a weaker person."**

"Is that what you think I am? A weak person?"

"**I believe there is a wide gulf between the strength I needed to become what I am and weakness, Archer Emiya. Uncommon is the man who will not break, given sufficient time and pressure."**

"And what's your ideal?" Archer asked dismissively. "What is it the great Assassin fights for above all else? A better tomorrow? You can't do that through killing. Believe me, I've tried."

"**At the core of every lofty goal, every embattled ideal, there is a kernel of something simple," **Assassin said distantly. "**Shirou Emiya wishes to save everyone because he does not value himself, and even a creature such as he was saved from the flame. A desire for justice is his kernel. Your Master, Rin Tohsaka, wishes to win this Holy Grail War for the sake of nothing more than pride, and so her resolve is weak. She has no such kernel." **He did not continue.

"And yours?"

"**Atonement."** Just one word.

"For what?" Archer couldn't help but ask. He was getting drawn into the other Servant's uncharacteristically thoughtful soliloquy, despite his best efforts.

"**I no longer recall. That is a blessing, I think."**

"You want to atone for something you can't even remember?" he asked incredulously.

"**Dost thou remember the moment thy journey began? The precise thought or nexus of events that led thee to walk the path of the hero?"**

Archer remembered heat. He remembered rain on his skin. He remembered rough arms, holding him tight. That was all that was left. "No."

"**Ideals are not momentary flights of fancy. They are thine identity." **He was silent. "**It's strange. I feel more human now than I have in centuries. Perhaps a quirk of my summoning. I was never meant for such a form."**

_Not meant for such a form. You weren't meant to be at all. _Archer sat in silence. Clouds touched the edges of the sky, but if there was to be a storm, it wouldn't be for a while. "You seem like a perceptive guy," he said finally.

"**I did not become what I am by being unobservant," ** Assassin replied dryly.

"Have you ever lost something, Assassin?"

He didn't respond.

"That feeling of…" As if he were still that long-gone boy, he grasped for words. "You know something is wrong. Missing. And you can't stop poking the empty space where it used to be. Your fingers come away bloody. Everything you look at is wrong for its absence. But you still _sense_ it. What should be, but isn't."

Assassin was silent long enough that Archer figured he might just be done talking. But when he did, Assassin's voice sounded _bleak_ as he echoed the words Archer least wanted to hear. "**So thou feel it as well."**

Archer's mouth went dry, though he had no such thing at the moment. "What do you feel, Assassin?"

"**A world that is sick. Air that chokes with every breath. We passed people on the street who should have been dead, and yet moved. We passed empty spaces where people should have been. Places that should have been vibrant and full of life, rendered grey and insubstantial. A drumbeat, pounding judgement on an existence that is impossible."**

Himself. Caster. And now Assassin. Three times, three powerful beings who knew that _something_ was desperately wrong. That was the kind of evidence you just couldn't ignore. "A drumbeat?" he asked slowly.

"**Ripples in a pond," **Assassin said quietly. "**A disruption, sending echoes through time and space. Something that must not happen. If the source of the shockwaves can be identified, then all may become clear."**

"Caster said something similar," Archer said. "She said something in the last few decades caused a… I don't know. A splitting off. A worldline that's… wrong."

"**I am not surprised that she could sense what we do, but she thinks too linearly. There is a point where things diverged from what should have been possible, true, and this point lies in the past. Some trivial change from which the timeline was made unrecognizable. But when a stone is thrown into water, ripples travel in every direction, not in some arbitrary **_**forward**_**. From outside of time, past and future are meaningless."**

"You're saying that whatever made this world wrong," Archer said slowly. "It might not have happened yet?"

"**And there is nothing we can do to stop it," **Assassin said in a neutral voice. "**If we feel the effects of something cataclysmic, there must always be a cause. One cannot exist without the other. No matter the actions that we take, we will be unable to prevent it from taking place."**

"So it's the same thing it always is," Archer said bitterly. "Summoned into a massacre that I can't fix, just so I can watch the horror."

"**Thou art wrong on two counts," **Assassin said. "**A loss of life is not necessarily involved. We speak of one singular event, one moment that shakes everything. Such a thing may not be inherently a thing of death, though it is certainly something unnatural."**

"And the second?" Archer said, resigned.

"**The moment of cataclysm is fixed. Nothing that happens afterward is, and the circumstances that lead there are not either. The future is still mutable. Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which a magus violates the rules of magic to perform a ritual to receive infinite power, and that this is what we feel the echoes of. Either he is allowed to wield it unopposed, or we prepare for such an eventuality, and stand ready to end his life before he can use it to kill or dominate. We cannot stop him from obtaining the power, but our actions may shape the consequences." **Assassin's voice had grown hard. Unyielding. "**If you choose to fight, you may ensure that it does not cascade into something truly horrific."**

"If the cataclysm isn't just the whole world blowing up," Archer said, but the protest sounded weak even to him. _This is more important than your grudge. But you knew that already, didn't you?_

What was more important didn't matter. He'd given up on the greater good.

_But this time you have a chance._

A meaningless chance. A chance to fuck up and watch a lot of people die. And besides, Assassin was sugarcoating it. They didn't _know_ what it was. Something so powerful must surely include death as a matter of course.

_But you don't know that._

Duty pulled him unwillingly forward as if he had an iron fishhook the size of his head imbedded in his ribcage. The old instincts flaring up. The ones he hadn't used in so, so long that he couldn't remember his father's face anymore. "Well, what the hell. I guess I've got nothing to lose. You think it's soon?"

"**When I took part in the Fourth Holy Grail War-"**

Archer's eyes widened. "You were in-"

"**-I felt the ripples then, as well. They were slow, and they were weak, and they were intermittent. Distant. What I feel now is resounding. Rapid. Not distant thunder, but the sound of a marching army just over the dunes. If it has not yet happened, it will soon."**

"How soon?" Archer asked, not wanting to know.

"**Days. Perhaps a few weeks, at the outside edge. I do not believe it to be longer than that. They have intensified further even since I was summoned two days ago."**

"It must have something to do with the Grail War, then, right?" A flock of birds danced and cartwheeled, getting lost in the sunlight.

"**It seems a fair assumption to make. I am here for a reason."**

"You really believe that things have meaning, don't you?" He shook his head. "I used to be the same, you know. When I died, I thought it meant something. What I saw after that… atrocity after butchering after massacre. How many of the people who perpetrated those things thought the same way I did?"

"**Humanity has long been attuned to death," **Assassin said. "**The fact that such horrors exist are proof of our free will, and therefore have a kind of meaning all their own."**

"That's bullshit. One killer to another? It's all senseless."

"**Thou misunderstand me. Men killing one another for their own gain does not hold any particular meaning in a vacuum. What matters is the choice, and that choice is what is most meaningful of all. When violence is easy, when selfishness is always within one's grasp, how blessed is he that takes the path of kindness? The path of self-sacrifice? The path of empathy? If man was incapable of making the wrong choice, what would ever be learned from making the right one?"**

"And what does that say about the people who made the wrong choice?" Archer muttered. "It's easy to be high and mighty about what's right until your hands are so stained with blood that you can't picture what they looked like clean."

"**Do thou believe my hands are so spotless, Archer Emiya?"**

"No. I don't. I don't know your deal, but I don't for a second think they are."

"**What we are is not so dissimilar," **Assassin said. "**Thou art a guardian, art thou not?"**

"What gave it away?"

"**Thy kind almost inevitably falls into a particular kind of melancholy. The sort of nihilism that only comes from a betrayal of the self."**

Anger and resentment flashed in his insubstantial eyes. _I'm mad because he's right_, he thought, but that only made him angrier. "It's not a betrayal if there was no true self to betray in the first place," Archer said.

"**I do not believe that thee were so lacking. It is easier to believe such a fiction if it makes thy cynicism more palatable."**

"But what do you mean that we're the same?"

"**We are both agents in service to a higher power. Thou serve as a piece of humanity's collective immune system. Thou art summoned into infection, and must keep it from spreading. My primary purpose was to watch over the order I founded, but by the time generations had passed, the Hashashin were hunted and destroyed. I mourn them, but I do not regret. Nothing built by mortal hands resists the tests of time infinitely. I am Allah's blade. I make sure the world moves in the directions it should. I eliminate some who threaten the stability of Allah's kingdom before they can become a threat."**

"So you're kept alive and made to kill, and you think you have free will." It was an accusation more than it was a question.

"**I am what I am because I chose to be. Free will always has consequences. Though my crime is distant and forgotten, it was my choice, and still I carry the repercussions with me."**

"It never gets any easier to carry, does it?" A stupid question. He'd been carrying his burden for an eternity, after all.

"**No."**

It still sucked to hear.

* * *

"Okay, Shirou, are you ready for this?"

Shirou sat cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, trying not to let his growing nervousness show on his face. Directly across from him, Rin sat facing him, and Sakura sat to his left in a silent show of support. Taiga had been gone for about an hour and a half, and he thought Sakura was starting to get sleepy; she'd hardly said a word since. "I guess I am, but Tohsaka, you still haven't—"

"Shush," Rin said. "It's easier this way. Now, you understand what we're trying to accomplish, right?"

Shirou nodded. "Open my switch so I can give Assassin more power. Not enough power, but he'll be able to fight, probably."

"Good. So you were listening," Rin said. "There are dangers to this. I'm as sure as I can be that I've prepared everything correctly, but there's no such thing as one hundred percent on this kind of thing."

"I know," Shirou replied. "It could kill me or burn me out, but the same thing will definitely happen if I can't fix this. I won't be any use to anyone that way." He didn't love the idea of getting killed, but sometimes you just had to take a risk.

"Okay," Rin said. "So basically, it's going to be like jumpstarting a car. We've got to give your circuits a kick in the ass to force your switch open, but once it is, you should be able to toggle it at will. I need you to do exactly what I say. Got that?"

Shirou nodded.

"Okay," Rin said, then pulled a tin out of her bag, the kind grandmas kept little hard candies in. He didn't recognize the brand, but the multicolored candies she shook out looked vibrant and appetizing. She picked out one that was a deep red color and held it out to him. "Swallow this."

Beside him, Sakura frowned, but as promised, he followed Rin's directions. The candy was strangely tasteless, and he was pretty sure that he'd break his teeth if he tried to chew it. A little salty, maybe? He supposed that might just be the magic messing with the taste.

Sakura rested a hand gently on his forearm. "Senpai, I think that's—"

Shirou swallowed. It hurt all the way down. "Ow. You could have given me some water or something, Tohsaka.

"—A rock," Sakura finished lamely.

Shirou choked, but it was far too late to stop it from being in his stomach. "Tohsaka?"

Rin was looking at him with wide eyes and a wider grin. "Wow, you just went for it, huh? No hesitation at all. I could have handed you literally anything, and you'd have eaten it."

"_Don't feed a guy a rock, Tohsaka!"_

Sakura looked disappointed, but whether it was with him or with Rin was not immediately clear. "Tohsaka-senpai…"

Rin laughed for a few moments, then sobered. "Anyway, get ready, Emiya. Once it starts to dissolve in there, it's going to feel really—"

Everything went red. Shirou began to melt.

No, wait. He wasn't melting. It just felt like he was. The feeling was not all that dissimilar from the one Assassin's presence caused. But strangely, as much as this hurt, it was nothing compared to that. Instead of losing control of his body and flopping onto the ground, he stiffened with a grunt.

"_Senpai?"_ Sakura said, panicked, eyes darting back and forth from him to Rin. "What's happening to him? What did you do?" Her hands were both on his arm, and he could barely feel them. Two slightly cooler spots in the heat pounding through him.

Rin looked supremely unconcerned. "Like I said, it's a jumpstart. It's going to hurt for a while."

"I'm," Shirou choked out with a tremendous amount of effort, "okay, Sakura." It wasn't _true_, exactly, but it wasn't really _un_true, either. "This, is, ngh, nothing..."

"I'm surprised you can talk already," Rin said, genuinely impressed. "You must be in a lot of pain."

Sakura's wide eyed, worried gaze turned back on him, and her hands tightened on his arm, and something that wasn't quite pain fluttered in his chest. _Is this shutting my heart down? _She studied him, her face barely a foot from his, and she gnawed furiously on her lower lip. He wanted to tell her he was okay again, and that she didn't have to look so concerned on his behalf, but those six words had taken a lot out of him. "Senpai…"

"Well, Emiya," Rin cut in heartlessly, "if you're feeling good enough to make doe eyes at Sakura, you must be feeling good enough to do some magic, right?"

"D-doe eyes?" Sakura stammered, as Shirou grunted "To do—", but Rin didn't let him protest.

"Good, good," she said, and compromised as he was, he couldn't tell whether she was being cruel on purpose or not. "Let's start out with some strengthening, alright?" She handed him a table leg, and Shirou didn't have it in him to ask where she'd gotten it. "Strengthen that."

It took him longer than it usually would, but he managed it; then she made him do it again. And again. And again. Each time, it got a little easier; each time, his body hurt just a little less. What was most impressive was that none of the attempts failed; even the bad ones still succeeded in doing _something._ Sweat ran down his brow and down his neck, and Sakura's hands were still on his arm. She wasn't speaking anymore, but the two or three times he overextended and his consciousness or balance began to waver, she was right there to grab him and keep him upright.

Time ticked agonizingly by. He'd never performed this much magic this quickly, and as miserable as he was, he was entranced. _Have I been doing magic this wrong, this whole time?_ It was another hour later before Rin allowed him to stop.

But, of course, it wasn't over. There was still one more thing he had to do.

The part he'd been most dreading.

"Alright," Rin said finally. "Assassin, are you here?"

"**I am,"** he said, and beside him, Sakura made a valiant effort to keep her cool.

He no longer burned, but he was exhausted. Nothing was more appealing than lying down right here and passing out would have been. He took a deep breath, preparing himself. "Alright," he said. "Just… give me a second to get ready."

"Senpai," Sakura said softly, "you don't have to do this now if you don't want to. You can rest up first. It might be easier if—"

Shirou shook his head. "No, it needs to be now," he said. "If I put it off, I won't ever want to do it."

Her lips twisted again, but she nodded. "Okay. If you're sure."

_It's going to hurt. It's going to be worse. It'll destroy me and I won't be myself enough to tell him to stop._ He inhaled again. Exhaled. His eyes met Sakura's once again, and the reassuring smile that spread across his face felt surprisingly genuine. "You're protecting me, right?"

Sakura's eyes widened slightly with a tiny gasp, and her cheeks tinged red. She nodded firmly.

Shirou closed his eyes, steadying himself, but he could still see her face. His pounding heart slowed, just enough to be noticeable. "Assassin," Shirou said. _It's going to hurt, it's going to hurt, it's going to hurt,_ _itsgoingto. _"You can materialize."

In a coalescing swirl of dark motes of light, a shadowy form gathered, and for the first time since he'd fought Berserker, Assassin stood before him. Much as he had in the main room the night of his summoning, he stood with a hunch, shoulders pressed in to minimize his profile, to not break anything. Spikes bristled. Black armor gleamed. Blue fire burned, breaking on the ceiling, but nothing it touched burned. He didn't have his sword, but there was no doubt that Assassin could kill every single person in this room in moments, without breaking a sweat, And inset into a snow-white skull, two points of blue fire burned. There were nothing like pupils to show direction, but Shirou knew that Assassin was looking him directly in the eyes.

Sakura gasped again, this one an involuntary expression of fear, and he took her hand and squeezed it without thinking. She made no further noise.

"Wow," Shirou breathed, and so incredible was the sight that it took him this long to realize that… he didn't hurt. His body _buzzed_, an electric feeling like standing too close to a power line; not something pleasant, but not mind-numbing agony. It was a strange feeling, seeing his Servant like this. The sight of him had seemed so intertwined with some of the most abject misery he'd ever experienced in his life, but now…

"**It is good to see thee with my true eyes," **Assassin said, and nothing resembling a jaw moved with the words, "**while thou art not convulsing in pain." **In fact… nothing about him moved but the flames. Shirou had never seen any allegedly living thing so completely, impossibly still.

"Uh…" Shirou said, at a loss for words. "You too, big guy."

Rin had scooted back until her back was pressed up against the wall, but if it had been out of fear, she was doing a remarkably good job hiding it; all Shirou could see in the brief glance he gave her was a kind of awed fascination.

He'd expected Sakura to be terrified, but Shirou wondered if his initial assessment of her reaction had been wrong. She looked… serene. She looked more relaxed than she had since Shirou had found her the day before. She looked _relieved._ Her head tilted, and she smiled at him, and it was absolutely radiant.

He returned the smile out of sheer reflex, his chest rebelling once again, but he could feel the look of confusion on his face.

She giggled quietly, a sound deeply at odds with the skeleton knight standing just a few yards away. "I was so afraid for you, Senpai," she said softly. "But now I see. You do have a protector. Assassin will keep you safe, won't he?"

The confusion faded, and his smile was all that was left. "It's not really fair, huh? I've got two really strong people protecting me."

Sakura went red again, for some reason, but she didn't flinch away or startle this time. "I just want you to be okay. That's all." Her eyes slid away, and she looked embarrassed. "I'm being silly, I guess."

Shirou shook his head. "You're not!"

"So how's it feel for you?" Rin asked conversationally, clearly tuning the two of them out. "Are you feeling any side effects?"

Assassin still had yet to move a single time as he replied. "**I am still weakened, but I believe that thee knew that the supply would still need bolstering. I should be as strong as I was when I fought thine Archer; stronger than I was when I fought Berserker. Should we meet again, I believe I will be able to do more than delay."**

The buzzing was shifting into something else. It was slow — so slow, in fact, that he barely noticed from moment to moment — but by now the feeling was something more akin to a pins-and-needles sensation. More unpleasant, but not quite pain, yet.

"Yeah, that'll probably keep getting worse," Rin said when he told her this. "Your symptoms will get more and more unpleasant until he's dematerialized, and it'll take time for them to go away once he is."

"Don't push yourself, Senpai," Sakura said. "Do you want to put him away?"

Shirou shook his head. "Not yet. I need to know what to expect."

"Keep him out too long, and you'll probably end up right back where you started," Rin said, a note of warning in her voice. "What you're feeling will turn back to pain eventually. Remember, you have the same problem. It'll just happen slower. And having him exert himself will accelerate it."

"I know, I know," he said, though he'd hoped it wouldn't get that bad anymore. Nausea turned his stomach; it was subtle at first, but it grew more and more pronounced as time went on. A twinge in his forehead pricked at him as well. As each new symptom developed or worsened, he relayed it to them.

After about five minutes, the pins-and-needles has turned to genuine pain, though not as bad as it had been. Yet.

Six minutes or so, and his head pounded with every heartbeat, and the nausea was growing difficult to ignore.

Eight minutes was when things began to edge just a little too close to "unbearable," and once again he found himself drenched in sweat, gasping just a little for breath.

"Senpai…" Sakura whispered.

Giving her hand a short squeeze for reassurance and then releasing it, he stood, slightly unsteady.

"Be careful," Sakura said nervously, though she didn't immediately move to follow him. "You look really weak…"

Shirou walked (okay, staggered) until he stood just before Assassin, looking up at him. "Assassin."

"**Yes, Contractor?"**

"Thank you. I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for you." Then, as steadily as he could, he slowly held out his hand.

Assassin gazed down at him. Moving for the first time since he'd appeared in the room, his huge, armored hand gripped his. He was surprisingly gentle; apparently, he was very aware of his strength. Shirou believed he could accidentally crush his hand as easily as he could a paper cup.

There, with Rin and Sakura looking on as witnesses, Shirou and Assassin shook hands for the first time.

* * *

_We're coming to the end of the beginning._

_Next chapter: A Pale Horse_


	21. A Pale Horse

_"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."_

* * *

It was nighttime, so Illya made sure that Berserker was close by. Not so close as to alert the people in the house, of course, but close enough that he'd be able to come to her rescue if she needed. He could move _fast_ for how big he was.

Lancer had been close by for a while, but it seemed like he was just spying on her. That was okay. She wasn't doing anything so secret that he couldn't know about it. She was spying too, but she didn't like to use that word. There wasn't really any strategic advantage to be gained from coming here herself. This wasn't Grail War business. Not really.

She had familiars everywhere, all but blanketing the city. A couple of them, she kept circling Ryuudou Temple, where Caster and Saber had fortified. Another pair had been following Rider ever since their spat in the grocery store. One was watching Lancer watch her watching the house. Others circled the town, keeping eyes and ears open for any unexpected movement. If there was anything particularly important, they would alert her, and she would be able to look through their eyes.

Not a lot happened in this city that Illyasviel von Einzbern couldn't see. Anything inside a bounded field was mostly off limits, but otherwise?

_What am I doing here? _she thought. _This is stupid._ _You're being stupid, Illya. Go home. _But she didn't want to go home.

Home was big and empty. Home was lonely.

That was fine. She loved being alone. She really did.

She didn't want to go home, though.

They were in there. Rin Tohsaka and the Makiri girl and… him. Shirou.

(And the Assassin that felt so familiar, but she adamantly refused to consider why that might be.)

(She didn't like thinking of those times, so she wouldn't.)

She wanted desperately to go knock on the door. To demand to speak to him. She wouldn't, but she wanted to. _How can you be so happy? How can you laugh like that? Didn't you lose him too?_ The thought didn't help. It only made her feel colder. More alone.

She hadn't felt alone when he'd treated her like a sister. He hadn't even _known_, she didn't think, and he'd still treated her with respect and care. _Her._ After everything she'd tried to do to him.

What _was_ she doing here? She'd been sitting in this stupid tree for an hour, since just after that weird loud lady with the motorcycle had disappeared. Since then… She'd just watched. There was nothing to see from here, but she watched anyway. She watched and tried to ignore the longing that was eating her alive.

Her thoughts ran in circles. A dog chasing its own tail, unable to move forward. A burst of magic from inside the house, then another, and then another. Minor spells. Practice, it felt like. She wondered if those were Shirou.

_Come back with me_.

Why would she?

_I can make enough for you, too._

Why would _he?_

Assassin's presence solidified somewhere inside, and she gasped. It was somewhere near all that magic practice. Maybe Shirou had figured something out, and he could actually use his Servant now.

If that was the case, she tried to ignore the swell of impossible, _stupid _pride in him that she felt. _He's the enemy._

If anything, that only meant that he would be a better opponent, right? There wasn't much fun in a fight that was already decided. There had to be the question of who would come out on top, and if he hadn't even been able to summon his Servant in any major capacity, he wasn't going to be any fun when she actually… When she actually did _what_ exactly?

Around and around and around. The dog would never catch its tail unless someone cut it off and handed it to the poor creature.

Something buzzed in her skull. An alert. Something was happening. It was too dangerous for her to just be out on the street, even if she was hidden a little bit. When she saw through her familiars, she was no longer aware of her body or her surroundings. Squirming and grunting, she pulled herself higher up into the tree until she was hidden more completely, then closed her eyes. "Show me," she whispered.

The image flickered to life, clear as day. She recognized the setting immediately. The church on the hill. The carriage in front of it. So it was Rider, then. Wordlessly, the familiar showed her a ghost from moments before; Rider, that slutty bitch, entering the church, alone. _Interesting. If she's in there, the bounded field has been broken, right?_ _There's no harm. _The familiar flitted forward, up to the stained glass window. The most she could see were moving shadows. Fighting? It looked like it could be fighting.

Back in her physical location, Lancer's presence disappeared. The familiar following him would have no trouble keeping up despite his inhuman nature.

The shapes stopped. The only sound she could hear were the soft flitting of crystalline wings. Then, with a resounding crash (and maybe a squeal?) the carriage broke through the wall of the church and disappeared. The familiar darted down to the hole, just in time to see Rider, covered in blood, throwing a body into the carriage. Someone definitely squealed, this time.

_Was that body the priest? Kotomine?_ It seemed like a fair guess. _But why? Why kill him? _But then, why take the body if he was dead? _So they kidnapped him, then. That seems really ominous. _Given the timing of Lancer's departure, it wasn't a huge leap to speculate that Kotomine might be a Master. _In that case…_ She racked her brain, trying to come up with a good reason that they wouldn't just kill him. _Ransom? No way. That jerk doesn't have anyone who cares about him. Plus, if he's a Master… _This was too strange. She couldn't leave this be.

_I have to follow them._

So, she did.

The carriage flew down dark streets like a bat out of hell, wheels screaming on asphalt, monstrous beasts of burden roaring as they strained and pulled. More than once, it almost pulled away; there was even a close call where she _did _lose sight of it, and had to guess at a shortcut to meet back up with it. Illya's familiars could only move so quickly, and Rider _was _a Rider for a reason. There was a purpose to all of this. Wherever they were going, it was not random.

A place of power. The old, abandoned theater in one of the districts that were all but abandoned by everyone but the homeless. There was a leyline, here, and the rumor was that the last Grail War had ended here. If they needed this kind of power… There must be a spell. A ritual, or a sacrifice, or… _something._

The carriage door burst open, and Rider's master, slimy and covered in blood (but apparently unhurt), scrambled out. Moments later, Rider followed, having ditched the leather jacket, three evenly spaced holes in her gut, and Kotomine — so it _was_ Kotomine — was held roughly in an almost bridal-style carry, limp like a sack of potatoes. One of his arms ended at the burnt husk of an elbow, and his legs were bent in ways that suggested they'd been broken. His face was a mask of blood, his hair plastered to his skull with it. Deep gouges had rent the rich fabric of his robe, and what looked like savage claw marks from some kind of bear or something had been carved down his back. Rider looked angry. It would have been frightening, if Illya had been present and afraid of such things.

They disappeared into the theater, and the familiar slipped in after them. This was neither a home or a workshop; there was no field to break through or alarm to trigger. A few muttered words, and the familiar perched in a shadow and melted, magical latticework twisting and reshaping over the course of minutes until she looked through the eyes of a spider. Something as unobtrusive as possible. This sort of thing was hard from such a distance, but she was pretty good at familiar manipulation. It would have taken a lesser mage almost an hour, she was sure.

Voices came from deeper in, and she followed the sounds. No one but these people had been in this building for a decade, it seemed. Dust lay thick over every exposed surface, and it hung in the air like a thick suffocating clouds. Candles burned here and there, illuminating the path, and shadows loomed large and blanketing, smothering everything. She passed a broken ticket stand, and moth-eaten red rope lay in the shadows like dead, bloody snakes. When she had been very young, Illya had liked to pretend that her castle in Germany had been haunted, but it had always been bright and warm and inviting, no matter how many lights she turned off. This seemed like the sort of place where ghosts would really live. Somewhere decayed and forgotten. Somewhere… _angry_.

There was a feeling in the air. Even the familiar could feel it. The buzz of magical energy, and the buzz of _intent_. Something was about to happen. Something was poised. The Fates had pulled their thread tight, and Atropos was readying her shears. Whatever was happening here would happen. There wouldn't be time to reach them, even if Illya wanted to; the theater was at the opposite end of Fuyuki.

She followed the voices to the theater proper. This room was bathed in torchlight, making the shadows of the seats and the railings and the people inside dance. The dust was lessened in here, but the disrepair was just as in evidence; the cushions were being eaten away, the wood cracked and ancient, metal rusted. The rows of chairs reminded her, she thought with a shiver, of a legion of gravestones all attentively turned toward the stage in reverence.

On the stage, the wooden floor was spotless and gleaming. A complex magical circle, more convoluted than something even she could create, had been carved into the center and inlaid with what could only be tacky human blood, and where the curtain had been, there sat a row of headless bodies like a wall, propped up by some mechanism or magic that she couldn't make out. The priest knelt in the center of the circle, his blood dripping and mingling with that on that floor. He was still breathing, and he even, shockingly, looked conscious. His eyes were open, though fixed on the floor for the moment, and absolutely empty. From what Illya knew, that was par for the course.

Pacing the floor in front of the stage, wringing his hands, was Shinji Matou. He was pale and drenched in nervous sweat, and he was muttering inaudibly to himself. It looked more like a frantic one-sided conversation than a monologue.

Rider lounged just ahead of the front row in a heavy, comfortable armchair that looked much too whole to have entered the theater more than a day or so ago. She was still covered in blood, though it was dry, and her face was still twisted in dull rage. "-put this off," she was saying, her voice fading into audibility as the spider crept closer. "I haven't broken him yet, old man. He won't be as good a vessel if he's not afraid."

Off to Kotomine's left stood that wizened, wrinkly old bastard, Zouken Matou. "Fear has nothing to do with the ritual," he said, in a voice like a doting grandfather. He'd been more corrupted than anyone else in the room. This Illya knew from experience. The grandfather schtick was only more disturbing with that knowledge. He wore a wide grin, dark humor shining in his beady black eyes, though his head was bowed as he spoke to Rider through twisted, rotting teeth. "I understand that you're disappointed, my queen, but time is of the essence, and I do not believe the greatest torturer Heroic Spirit the world has ever seen would be able to break this man's mind before his body gave out."

Rider spat on the floor. "All the more reason for me to try."

Her spider took a wide berth, crawling along the wall at the edges of the light, trying to get a better angle on the circle that trapped Kotomine.

"Let me rephrase my clumsy words, only so that I may be more clear," Zouken replied humbly, and Illya couldn't help but wonder if his bowing and scraping was as transparently manipulative to Rider as it was to her. "If you have not broken him in the half an hour he was in your grasp, then that means he truly is what we seek. Not even fear fills his heart. There is nothing to influence the Spirit."

The circle… it wasn't just any magic circle. Not just any ritual. This circle… those runes, those designs, that inscription… It was a _summoning circle. _And if they kept calling him a vessel, that could only mean one thing. There was a term Illya had encountered in her studies. A theoretical concept that had never been successfully performed. One with a terrifying cost.

_Pseudoservant_.

A human being fused with a Heroic Spirit, granted incredible power in a mortal form. The research was scattered and vague, rife with speculation. But such a thing...

Vessel. An empty vessel. A Pseudoservant would likely be a kind of fusion of the two entities; both and neither at the same time. An _empty_ human body would… She wasn't sure. If Kotomine was as empty as they said, would he be overwritten entirely?

In all of her reading, the impression she'd always gotten was that there was no true way to completely override the original vessel's body, but that was the question, wasn't it? It hadn't really ever been done before, and the rest was all speculation.

What if they were wrong about him? She knew enough about the priest to know that his influence would be ruinous, no matter the Heroic Spirit summoned into him.

This was bad. Whatever this was… Whatever they wanted to put inside Kirei...

It was bad.

Time to roll the dice.

_Blink_.

In an instant, she was inhabiting a different familiar, this one tailing Lancer. The Servant in blue was sprinting as hard as he could, but he looked confused, angry. Like he didn't know where he was going. She didn't recognize his surroundings, but she assumed he must be running toward the church. With a burst of energy, she willed the familiar forward, its glass wings straining to gain ground. "Lancer!" she called, fear tinging her words.

He didn't stop running, but his spear whirled in his hand and pointed back at her, his head whipping back to look at her.

Before he could strike, she projected her voice in a rush. "Lancer, Zouken Matou and Rider have Kotomine in an old theater. I don't know where, like an address, but I can guide you there with this familiar."

His face twisted in confusion. "What—"

"There's no time, Lancer!" She broke to the left, in the direction of the theater. With a curse, he turned to follow. "They're setting up some kind of summoning ritual with him as the focal point. Lancer, I don't know what they're trying to do, but it's _really bad_. We're enemies, and if this was just about you and your Master, I'd let him die, but it's _not, _and no one else is close enough, and I need you to _stop them."_

Lancer took a moment to process this, then stashed away his lance again as he ran. "Einzbern, right? That little girl?"

Irritation flared up, but she forced it down. This wasn't the time. "_Yes_, that's me, Lancer. You need to be fast. This will be bad for _everyone_."

"If it's so bad, why doesn't the bastard use a Command Seal?" he grunted. Buildings and unfamiliar streets whipped past, and the wind of their speed would have been blinding if her familiar had human eyes.

Kotomine's battered body flashed before her eyes. "What hand did he have his spells on?"

Lancer frowned. "The… right, I think."

"He doesn't have that hand anymore. Rider cut it off. Listen, Lancer, keep following my familiar. I'm going to go try to find out more."

His eyes widened. "Wait—"

_Blink._

"—think you can control something like that, Zouken Matou?" Kotomine's voice was quiet, but it did not shake. He was weak, but he would not show weakness. "No one can control such a thing." He hadn't moved from the position she'd left him in.

Zouken barked out a laugh. "That's where you're wrong, _Father_." He put as much scorn as possible into that last word. "You see, for a being such as that, there is _no such thing_ as free will. They are made to follow their God's will, and they are not granted the _ability_ to choose. That's my loophole, you understand. I'm simply transferring the identity of 'the voice that must be obeyed' from Him to me."

There was one line that she'd read, a footnote, that at the time had made her laugh. It had seemed so mind-bendingly arrogant; so patently ridiculous. Now, recalling it chilled her to the bone.

"_The possibility of manifesting a Divine Spirit has been one that has entranced Magi since the Age of Gods ended millennia past. Using a human body as a medium could allow for a kind of transubstantiation, a melding of the physical—the mortal and corporeal—and the Divine, though such a thing has never been attempted."_

Kotomine was silent for a long, long moment. Then, impossibly, he smiled. Nothing else on his face moved, but the corners of his lips twitched up into something cruel. "Is that what you believe will happen when he is given flesh?"

"I do not need to believe anything, Father," Zouken said dismissively. "Knowledge requires no such idle fancy as _faith_."

"Very well then, Zouken Matou." He spread what was left of his arms, though they shook violently. "I confess to a certain amount of… _curiosity_. The Summoning will be easier with a willing subject, don't you agree?"

Zouken frowned. "What's your game here, Kotomine?"

The priest shook his head, lowering his arms to hang limply at his sides. "I have no game. I am nothing but an empty shell, you see," he said, and laughter burbled at the edges, "and I merely wish to understand a new experience. I would be the first of my kind, would I not?"

"Shut him up," Rider called offhandedly. "He's getting on my nerves."

Zouken's frown melted back into an affable smile. "My queen is correct. It is time to prepare the ritual, in any case. Shinji," he said, and his voice hardened. "Bring me the catalyst."

Breathing hard, Shinji climbed up onto the stage and held out a lacquered wooden box. Zouken took it reverently, then waved his grandson away. The lid opened without a sound, and he drew out a horseshoe. An _ancient_ horseshoe. It barely looked anything like what a horseshoe should have been, but it was still very undeniably a horseshoe. It must be thousands of years old, at least, and there were words roughly carved into it in a language she didn't recognize. Flecks of something that might have been old blood dotted one edge, as though it had been used to kill someone at some point.

Catalysts were only objects—only pieces to draw an energy from another plane. They weren't anything that inherently had power most of the time, save for the connection with the one being summoned. This thing. This thing dripped with an undeniable magical energy that felt as ancient as it looked.

Illya, from her position as the Einzbern heir, had seen more than her fair share of artifacts and felt the power within them—conceptual weapons and relics, mainly. What one could feel from items that could serve as physical catalysts was often limited, even when they _were_ from the Age of the Gods.

This catalyst was unlike any other.

Physical. Conceptual. Divine. Mortal.

Powerful.

Illya didn't recognize it, and that certainly didn't make her feel any better.

Zouken laid the horseshoe gently—reverently—before the summoning circle, and the soft _click_ as it touched wood echoed throughout the silent theater.

Kotomine watched it calmly, then leaned forward to read the letters. "_Gehenna_. To invoke the Valley of Sacrifice is no small thing. So the one you'll be calling..."

"Do you not think such a thing to be appropriate?" Zouken said. "When you face an avatar of the grave itself, the only thing that can kill it would be… Well. Another spirit of death."

_Blink._

"Lancer!" she said through the familiar, and his head jerked over again. "He's trying to summon a Divine Spirit into your Master! I think… I think he wants to fuse him with an angel!"

Lancer's face went white. "That's not possible."

"Normally, I'd agree with you," she said breathlessly, "but there's a framework over the circle that I don't recognize. I can feel something from it." Saying she felt "something" was a severe understatement, but trying to get Lancer to run any faster was pointless. "Even if it doesn't work, I think it could take out half the city when it fails!"

Lancer said something in reply, but she was deep in her familiar's sensory data. Time passed. She didn't know how long; she wasn't supposed to stay in her familiars for this long. There were adverse effects. A blurring. "You're just a few minutes away," she said, coming back to reality, "but you need to hurry. They're almost ready!"

_Blink._

The room was still. The room was silent, but for the sound of Zouken's voice. "A wall against the descending winds," he intoned. "The four seals shall shatter and the crown shall emerge. Let the three-forked road to ruin reaching unto the Kingdom cycle and break." A wind rose in the empty theater, sending curls of dust swirling through the air, tugging at the hem of the old man's robes. Shinji was cowering a good distance away, while Rider had not budged from her armchair.

From where the spider sat, she could not see Kirei's face, bowed as his head was.

Every last cubic millimeter of the air was suffused with magic and the stench of death. Even through the familiar, which had no sense of touch nor smell nor taste, it felt like being trapped at the bottom of a rotting ocean. The spider did not breathe, but it was almost choking on the magical overload in the air.

"Shackle, shackle, shackle, shackle, shackle," Zouken recited in a pounding rhythm, each word growing louder and more intent as he spoke. "Five bonds for repetition." The wind became a gale, a torrent of raw power and force pouring from the center of the circle. Each line flashed a blinding red, once, twice, and then held, bathing the room in bloody crimson. The shadows danced. Dust choked and swirled.

_Blink._

Lancer was close. She recognized his surroundings from the chase now, the particular dilapidated buildings he passed. He was moving fast. He was _so close_.

He wouldn't make it.

"_Lancer, you have to get there in time!" _she screamed. "_It's happening!"_

_He won't make it._

_Blink._

Columns of black smoke arose from the severed necks of the corpses, seven pillars of swirling smog that twisted and met twenty feet in the air, gathering like horrific stormclouds of pure, concentrated violence. The familiar felt a pull toward the circle, as though rusted fishhooks had been driven into each of its limbs. She resisted, and there was no time to think, because now there were lines of lifeforce pouring into the boiling clouds from from every direction; she couldn't wrap her mind around them for a moment, before it clicked with dawning, implacable horror.

The city.

He was _ripping the_ _souls from everybody nearby, and using them to power the Summoning. _A pull this strong would dissolve bodies into ash, and so many of the people nearby in this part of the city would be homeless that he must have understood that the public backlash would be minimal.

The sheer monstrousness of that thought froze her mind.

Magi were cruel. _She_ was cruel, but _this_—

A rumbling filled the theater, and the entire building shook. Chairs rattled and broke. With a resounding crash, along the edges of the great room, the mezzanine collapsed entirely, blanketing the room in a fresh coat of dust that was instantly wiped away by the pounding winds. A pulse of raw magical energy shook the very essence of the building. A second pulse. A third. Each closer than the last.

In the center of the maelstrom, Kirei Kotomine knelt alone as his matted hair whipped back and forth, as drops of his own blood flew from his wounds as they broke open and joined the tempest, and he was _laughing._ Illya saw the person underneath the hollow carapace, and he was _laughing_.

Zouken's voice had risen to a scream. "Thy spirit shall be under my command, thy fate determined by thy sword! Thou who hath no will and no reason, answer my call!" He stood tall as his withered, hunched frame would allow, steady, his hands thrown wide to either side as his robe whipped and buffeted around him. "Scourge of Gomorrah! Angel of the Abyss! Keeper of Sheol and The Righteous Cleansing Fire!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, and still, the familiar could barely hear his words. "The One True Horseman of Death!"

The pulsing quickened with each title, until finally it was a single, unyielding wall of pressure that enveloped everything. She lost sight of Rider and Shinji.

Lightning crashed somewhere within the cloud. Again. Again. Again.

The roar was deafening as Zouken's summoning reached its climax. "_Grand Rider! __**AZRAEL!"**_  
At that final word, that last name, the stormcloud coalesced into one pillar, blacker than night, whiter than the brightest light, deeper than the void between stars, more expansive than the universe, and plunged downward, smiting Kotomine and flowing into him and collapsing into an incomprehensible hole and roaring and the POWER of it the sheer HATRED AND DEATH exploded outward as magic, unrestrained, unleashed, poured forth and overwhelmed her familiar and shorted out her senses and flooded her body with the force of the backlash and—

The connection broke. Illyasviel von Einzbern was unconscious before her body hit the ground.

* * *

The ground heaved back and forth, and Lancer ran.

A crack opened up in the street as a sewer collapsed in on itself, and Lancer ran.

People died in every direction, ripped from life and fed into the cogs of some infernal engine, and Lancer ran.

The Einzbern girl wasn't talking anymore. That wasn't a good sign.

Who was he kidding? None of this was a good sign. This was the end of the goddamn world, localized to this corner of the city. _You crazy bitch,_ he thought, but the anger was a mask for the fear. _What do you think you're going to accomplish with this?_ The sickening pulses grew faster and faster, and the drain intensified, but Lancer was strangely untouched by it. Did it not affect Servants?

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered right now but reaching Kirei. He hated the bastard, and there would be a score to settle when all this was over, but the Einzbern girl had been right. This was bigger than any one of them and their personal grudges.

A familiar carriage. Medb's favorite ride that didn't have legs of its own.

(Her chariot was a close second, and more suited to battle, but less comfortable.)

Fear clawed at him, and he hardly knew what he was afraid of as he broke through the doors to the theater without slowing. Torches flickered and flared crazily, and he followed them. This close to the source of the disturbance, the ritual was its own kind of beacon.

He barreled toward the final door. It was old, rotted wood, and it would present no barrier to him.

Before he made it, the magic reached a fever pitch, and the door exploded outward, along with a rush of fire and force and mana. It blew him back, sending him soaring through the air with a startled yelp, and he hit the ground hard, tumbling and tumbling, Gae Bolg skittering away from him and vanishing, his head cracking against the ground. It sounded like hell—the wails of the damned and the screams of the dying in an unholy chorus that threatened to destroy his eardrums.

And then, all at once, it was silent.

It was still.

Not even the dust in the air moved.

With a shaking, coughing breath, Lancer forced himself to his feet, resummoned his spear, and stumbled forward to the doorway.

Inside, what once must have been the theater proper had been absolutely wiped clean. Mounds of rubble were piled against every wall, and all the seats seemed to have been torn away with the force of the spell. Medb and Shinji stood before the stage; Shinji clutched something, perhaps a talisman, in his shaking hands, and his entire body was wracked with trembles. The explosion hadn't blown the grease out of his hair, but he looked ready to pass out.

Medb looked as relaxed as she always did.

On the stage, Zouken stood, facing a kneeling figure that at first he almost didn't recognize. It was shaped like Kirei had been, roughly, but its clothes were tattered and torn and bloody, its head hanging limply. The Einzbern kid had said that he'd lost a hand, but he seemed to have both—

No. That wasn't quite true.

One hand looked human, but the other…

His first thought was that it was armored in plates of purest white up to the elbow, but that wasn't it either. The plates curved and molded together in a way that reminded Lancer of an insect's _carapace_ more than it did metal, and where it ended the plates disappeared into the skin of his arm like they were a natural part of it. That hand ended in gleaming claws, wickedly sharp. Kirei — if that still was Kirei — was breathing hard. And that was when Lancer noticed the thing he should have noticed the moment things went still. The sheer, terrifying power radiating off of the stage. Nothing should be that powerful.

_Nothing._

Zouken was panting too. "Tell me your name," he said to the figure.

When the voice answered, it was both familiar and alien. The sounds were the same, the vocal chords unchanged, but… Kirei's voice had always been slow and barely-inflected. This voice… it shook. "I have… many names. My name is Thanatos. My name is Abaddon. My name is Azrael." Slowly, his head lifted, and where once had been set two lifeless brown eyes, Kirei's body now carried eyes of a pale, piercing, icy _blue_. There was _emotion_ in those eyes. Hatred. Confusion. _Fear_. The eyes fastened on Zouken, then flicked to where Lancer stood, in the doorway, too shocked to move.

Zouken followed Azrael-Kirei's gaze, and smiled as their eyes met. "Ah, Lancer, it's so good of you to join us," he said, overflowing with good humor.

At the name, Medb whirled around, her mouth slightly agape, her eyes wide and girlish. "Cu?"

He raised the lance and prepared his plan of attack. If he threw the lance, he might be able to get Zouken, but that would leave him open to Medb's counterattack. She was the biggest threat right now, so he should deal with her first. She was always the biggest threat when she was in the room. Adrenaline and regular battle-fear continued to pound in his chest, and for a moment, he allowed it to overwrite the horror and confusion of whatever the ritual had just accomplished.

"I think he wants to kill us," Zouken said with mock surprise. "Azrael. Muzzle your dog."

Azrael studied him, then spoke, quietly and deliberately in a near request. "Lancer. Please don't move," he said, and every muscle in his body locked tight_,_ immobile no matter how he strained. _A Command Seal? _But no, in some indescribable way it felt _different_, and besides, Kirei had _lost_ his Seals, hadn't he?

"Interesting," Azrael murmured.

Medb seemed entranced by Lancer's inability to move, and he could only imagine what horrible thing she was thinking about. He stopped struggling. Like a night terror, paralysis felt worse the more you fought it.

The old man cackled, clapping his hands like a small child in a candy store, then turned back to his new Servant. "Now, then." He paced around the circle, staring into it like someone examining a new car that they'd just received as a gift. "Fascinating, fascinating. I almost didn't expect you to come, you know. I don't like trusting the information I've stolen from others, but the Einzberns did keep these particular breakthroughs locked _deeply_ away."

"I didn't have a choice," the fusion said. "The binding was absolute."

"Of course it was," Zouken replied. "I made some of my own modifications. You see…" He knelt down and pointed to specific lines that Lancer _couldn't_ see. "These, right here. I needed these to allow your Divine Spirit to be contained by mortal flesh, but frankly, I wasn't sure how well they would work." _For something so humble_, Lancer thought, _that sounds a lot like bragging. You just want to show off to the monster you've created. _"And here. You know, the Grail reserves an eighth slot, the Ruler class, for extraordinary circumstances. It's never been utilized before, but it exists, and these lines here," he gestured almost excitedly, "hijack that opening to allow for your summoning. The Grail itself did not provide much of the required energy, of course, but this set of sigils here… these are an incredible siphon." He seemed to catch himself, and the old man straightened, his smile fading. "Now… It's a formality, you understand, but I would like you to swear yourself to my service."

"Swear?" Azrael whispered hoarsely. He still seemed to be getting his bearings, and understanding what had just _happened_.

"Yes, yes," Zouken said impatiently. "You are my Servant now, and I know you don't have a choice. Still, I would like to hear it." He laughed dustily, brushing himself off.

"No," Azrael said, and a heartbeat later his eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. Shock writ plain upon his face.

"_No?" _Zouken growled. "You do not have the capacity to tell me _no."_

"No," he said again. His hands, one human, one plated, began to shake, and he looked down at them in something like awe. His eyes—Kirei's eyes, and not—glistened. "No," he said a third time, in a shaky voice, and he began to laugh. Not snidely, not smugly, not as he had ever heard Kirei's voice laugh before—a genuine, uncontrolled outpouring of relief and joy. It echoed throughout the destroyed theater, rebounding and doubling over on itself.

_Is he insane? _Lancer wondered. _No. No, he doesn't look that way. He looks…_ Like what? He couldn't put it into words.

Medb was watching none of this. She only had eyes for Cu at the moment. He couldn't even grimace at her.

Zouken took a step back, but it seemed more out of anger than fear. "You are overwhelmed by human emotion, are you not? Your true form does not possess the capacity to feel, and you do not know how to cope. That is what this madness is. I should have taken it into account. Emotional limiters of some sort," he mumbled to himself. "That is what you needed. I should have foreseen this incompatibility."

The laughter trailed off, and Azrael pushed slowly to his feet. The Summoning certainly hadn't shrunk Kirei's massive frame in the slightest, Lancer thought, as the man— Servant—whatever he was—towered over everyone present. He was smiling warmly, yet another thing that clashed unnaturally with what he expected from his Master. "It is entirely new, Master Zouken," he said. His voice was musical, and his use of the word _Master_ seemed to mollify the old man a little. "You see, I have not had such powerful… _reactions_ in a very, very long time." He strolled forward, clasping his shaking hands behind his back, and the circle did nothing to stop him. It was not a binding circle; it had never been meant to hold one such as he.

"And how do you feel?" Zouken asked. "This experience, that of being human, is what drives me, after all. I would not wish to exist without it."

Azrael stood before Zouken, and he bowed his head respectfully. "This is an incredible gift that you've given me, Master Zouken. The… weight of flesh." He looked once more at his hands. Slowly, he closed them, then opened them again. "Emotion. Desire. Even fear. I've… always been envious of such things. Mortals have so many blessings."

Zouken's frown melted into a smile, sensing the danger pass. "This _is_ my gift to you, great Azrael. All I ask in return is your obedience. Will you give it?" The old fool didn't think anything was wrong, Lancer thought. Azrael projected nothing but warmth and serenity, but something was _wrong_ about him.

"There is one thing that I have always been most envious of," Azrael said softly, and he paused to inhale, apparently savoring the hot, stuffy air in his lungs. "One thing that mortals possess that I simply… lack. Do you know what that is, Master Zouken?" His hands opened and closed at his sides in an apparent nervous tic. The right hand that flexed dug into its own strange flesh and scraped at it, the claws scratching the surface. He shook his head before the old man could answer. "I suppose it doesn't matter. The gift that you have given me, above all else, the thing I have craved for eternity, Zouken Matou…" He smiled, and for a moment, his eyes were as hollow and dead as Kirei's ever were. "Is free will." And no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Azrael was moving; in the blink of an eye, faster than a human could track, the white-plated, clawed hand clamped down over Zouken's skull. "Eternal life is given through death," he said softly, in the rhythm of a prayer, and Zouken screamed. White light poured from his mouth and eyes, as if he had become nothing more than a hollow shell of skin stretched over the birth of a new sun.

Shinji staggered away, squealing, and even Medb took a step back in shock, her laser focus suddenly interrupted. If Lancer hadn't been so horrified, confused, and distracted, he would have laughed at how annoyed she looked.

Zouken's screams grew louder, and louder still, and then become something more like choking. The light became white fire, and the smell of burning flesh filled the room. Azrael stood silently, and he wore a look that Lancer could only describe as… _mournful._

The fire burned itself out, and the sounds of agony and death stopped as Zouken's corpse collapsed bonelessly to the ground, putrid smoke pouring from where light had been a moment before. Dead. He was dead. Burned from the inside out, by…

By holy fire.

"You killed many to bring me here," Azrael said quietly, then knelt and murmured a short prayer over the smoking corpse. "To speak nothing of the unholy abomination you had become, Zouken Matou. You received nothing but the judgement you were owed." He turned his gaze to Medb. "The stench of sin hangs heavy upon you, Queen Medb," he said, unreadable. "Though I believe I said something much the same to you in my church."

Medb frowned, and she didn't look nearly as concerned as she should have. "The priest did, yeah," she said, and in contrast with her appearance, she sounded more off-balance than Lancer had ever known her to be.

"I am he just as much as I am the avenging angel," he said, and a note of exhaustion crept into his voice. "That was the flaw in his plan. Angels do not have free will, but… you mortals do. It's a beautiful idea, to be able to choose." He tilted his head to look at Lancer, and he nodded. "You may move once again. My apologies for resorting to those measures."

Lancer sagged, and had to catch himself before he fell. He walked forward, slow and cautious. "You commanded me without a Seal," Lancer said tersely. "I guess that means you're still my Master, but you shouldn't be able to do that."

Abaddon gave him a sheepish smile. "I apologize for that. I suppose it was a bit hypocritical of me, after that little speech."

"A little," Lancer said, but… he wasn't angry. He wasn't even afraid any longer. _That_ was strange. Everything was surreal, like afterglow without the pleasure, like a world that was too soft around the edges. A dreamscape; Lancer realized that though everyone was visible, no light sources remained. There was no shadow in this room.

With a heavy sigh, Azrael walked to the edge of the stage and slid to a seat, his long legs dangling over the edge like a child.

The soft sound of a grown man sitting down was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back; Shinji, no longer frozen, shrieked and tore out of the room like his ass was on fire. The talisman he'd been clutching — some kind of small, carved stone idol, no doubt to protect him from the siphon — clattered to the ground.

Azrael watched him go without concern, then rubbed at his face. "In any event, Medb, I am weary of death, this night. Though I did not ask for it, many innocent men and women died to allow me entrance to this world, and I would not see that body count increase further without cause."

"Sooo," Medb said, and the life was coming back into her. Lancer rolled his eyes. _There it is._ That obnoxious hunger. "You're not going to try kill me?"

_Try. Like he'd break a sweat._

The priest-angel shook his - their? - head. "If you give me cause, I will, but I will not be the aggressor now that Zouken is dead. There is no longer any need."

Lancer could see the gears turning in her head, and he could almost hear her thoughts in his own. _He's so strong that he's not even a little worried about leaving me alive_ led to indignation, which led to _but he __**is**_ _that strong_, which led, inevitably, to _he must be mine._ In some ways, she was predictable as a broken clock. She curtsied lightly, a girlish smile on her face. "That's very sweet of you, Azrael."

_Don't be fooled_, Lancer thought. _She looks like a fun girl, but she'll rip your heart out. Literally. _He paused in his thoughts. Was he… _rooting_ for Azrael? Truth be told, he didn't know what to think or how to feel. This entity was both his Master, and he was not. Azrael… Azrael didn't seem cruel, the way Kirei did, though. Kirei would not have allowed Medb to simply exist without some kind of plan to cause pain. That was the kind of man Kirei Kotomine was.

_But_, a voice whispered in his head_, there's always something. There's always a resonance. What other kind of person resonates with a person like Kirei, but a monster of one kind or another?_ He'd heard it said that the devil you knew was better than the one you didn't. He didn't even know which category his Master fell into anymore. Kirei had been awful, though, and his new Master was at least half Not-Kirei, so that was enough for now.

Lancer broke the silence first. "Master," he said.

The familiar-but-not face smiled warmly. "You may call me by my name."

"Which one?" Lancer said dryly. "Sounds like you have a few to choose from."

Azrael sat silently for a long moment. Disparate emotions warred on his face; sadness, happiness, confusion. "Not Azrael. But also… not Kirei, either. I am neither, but… I am also both. I have been called Abaddon, but not in a long time. That name, perhaps."

"Abaddon, then," Lancer said, giving him at least a modicum of respect, twirling his lance to rest on his shoulder. He'd do that much until he had a better read. "You killed the guy who brought you here. Which, good job. He sucked. But what now?"

Abaddon's smile turned sad, and yet again, his gaze fell to his hands. "I don't know," he said softly. "I've never been summoned into flesh, before. I've never been able to walk the mortal world before as anything other than a killer. Do you know what my purpose is, Lancer?"

He shook his head. "No, but I've got the feeling I'm about to find out."

"I am… many things. I have been many things. But most of all, I am an executioner," Abaddon murmured, and once again, disconcertingly, his eyes filled with tears. "I am humanity's executioner. When a timeline grows too dangerous… when it is no longer salvageable, and it threatens the stability of the greater reality, I bring about its end. I break the seals. I slaughter every single living person in that world." His breath caught. His fists clenched. "That's my role. I love you humans. I love you more than anything in the world, and my only reason for being is to destroy you. What I love, I must destroy _because_ I love them." The thing that looked like Kirei Kotomine choked out a sob, and Lancer did not believe for a second that it was an act.

Lancer eyed the strange fusion of a being, and tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. No one would ever expect… what, an angel of death? to be so fragile. Maybe he really _had_ never felt an emotion before.

Medb hopped up onto the stage to sit beside him, and placed a hand on his. Her eyes were wide and guileless, an impossibly easy mask for the cold calculation and cynicism underneath. "That sounds awful, Abaddon. I can't imagine being forced to kill the thing I love most."

Lancer grimaced. _The balls on that lie._ He'd lost the thread of her thoughts, now. If she was cozying up to him like this, she must have seen _something_ that entranced her, because she didn't usually go for the sensitive guys.

Maybe it was just the scale of the killing that had her panties in a knot. That seemed like the sort of thing that'd get her off.

He also couldn't tell if Abaddon was taking her lie at face value or not. The priest-angel nodded, though, and wiped away his tears with the other. "I apologize," he said again, "you mortals… I did not realize how strongly you _felt_. You all possess a strength that I have never needed to learn." He laughed shakily. "I suppose it's time to learn now."

Lancer frowned. _Kirei can feel?_

Medb cooed understandingly. "So then," she said. "This world is yours, Abaddon. You don't have to kill this one. What do you want to do?"

He didn't answer for a long, long time. Lancer and Medb exchanged a confused look before Lancer remembered to scowl at her.

"I don't know," Abaddon whispered again. For a being that radiated so much power… for something that was at least half Kirei… for all the hatred of his natural existence he professed… Abaddon looked like a child that had lost his parents in a crowd. The crushing loneliness. The helplessness. The fear. "I don't know…"

**END OF ACT ONE**

* * *

_Note: Big writing mood this chapter was Patchwork Chimera from the Umineko soundtrack. I really wanted to capture that vibe._

_So I expect this is probably going to be... controversial? But it's been the plan, at least in broad strokes, since before I put a single word on the page. Hopefully I've built up enough goodwill by this point that y'all will give me enough of the benefit of the doubt to stick around until I can sell you on it. __I've put a lot of work and thought into this._

_(Illya isn't dead.)_

_Next chapter: Interlude: To The Beginning_


	22. Interlude: To The Beginning

Kiritsugu Emiya still exists.

Iri's neck snaps under his fingers.

Why does he still exist?

His wife's bones sound like breaking ice as they shatter.

Irisviel's curse—

The Grail's curse—

Angra Mainyu's curse—

_(The love of his life.) Crunch._

Is not a death curse.

_Crunch._

It is the curse of life.

_Crunch._

(Years later, his son will roll his head and pop his neck,

and Kiritsugu will retreat to his room and silently sob.

But that is in the future.)

He should be dead should be dead _should be dead should be dead DESERVES TO BE DEAD DESERVES TO BE DEAD __**DESERVES TO DIE AND SUFFER AS HE DOES—**_

Illya looks up at him with trust in her eyes.

He screams.

He pulls the trigger.

The screaming doesn't stop.

He pulls the trigger.

Sobbing and wailing and clawing.

She smiles at him and he pulls the trigger.

She is not dead but he is dead to her because he knows what must come next and

_WHY AM I STILL ALIVE_

Time keeps skipping. Jittering. Back and forth and back and forth.

He stands in the Grail's black mud, and his gun is in his hand.

_He shoots his darling daughter in the head._

He puts an Origin Round in Kirei Kotomine's heart.

_Crunch._

He knows.

He knows what the Grail is now.

He knows what the thing he has fought so hard for is.

He knows what dwells within it.

_You are Angra Mainyu._

It must be destroyed.

_You are all the evil of the world._

He forgets to breathe, and only remembers when his lungs start to burn. In a daze, he wonders whether he should simply stop breathing forever, but his body will not let him, and he has a duty.

_You are the one who will save the world._

A pain like a lance smashes through his skull, but Lancer is long dead, and there is nothing physically wrong with his brain. Several of his bones are broken, but none in his skull. He thinks.

(This is the first time the Grail's curse will make him

feel as though his head is tearing itself to pieces.

It will not be the last. But that is the future.)

He doubles over. Retches. Black mud pours from his lips. He wishes it had been blood. With a ragged breath, he squeezes his eyes shut tight, gathering himself. "Assassin," he says into the darkness behind his eyelids, and his voice is surprisingly steady.

"**Contractor." **The voice is not physically present to disturb the air, but it still sets his ears ringing and his teeth jittering.

"Is it over?" he asks, then straightens. The pain is agony, but he can bear it for now. The Grail itself is... upstairs. The theater. One step, then another. Each one sends another dagger into his eye.

"**Archer is dead. I am all that remains."** There is no pride in his voice. No inflection to indicate that Assassin felt anything for what had transpired. "**The manifestation begins. What is thine intent?"**

"That thing—" His voice breaks. His eyes fill. He wipes the tears away, because he cannot afford to be distracted before his work is done. Assassin allows him his moment of dislocation. When he continues, he is more composed. "The Grail must be destroyed."

There is a long moment of silence. Will Assassin protest? Will he rebel? He has shown no such signs of disloyalty before, but if Kiritsugu takes away his purpose—

"**What did it show thee?"**

The headache redoubles as he climbs the stairs. He leans against the wall, putting more weight on the railing than it had probably been designed to take. "It showed me enough." The anger and pain in his voice is like broken glass and blood in his throat. Each word is a spike of pain, and not just because he has screamed his throat raw. "Come to me."

As he staggers down the hallways, the hulking Assassin materializes beside him, each step like thunder in the silent building. Kiritsugu stumbles, and a black gauntlet catches him by the shoulder before he can pitch down onto the grimy, muddy floor. Neither speak until they reach the theater doors.

Within, the Grail boils, black mud pouring from the chalice. The cup runneth over. Kiritsugu stares at it with a wave of revulsion and regret and misplaced love. _It's not Iri. Not anymore._ "Can you destroy it?"

A whisper that he does not comprehend slithers in his ear.

Assassin gazes upon it as well, and he is as unreadable as ever. What thoughts do those blue flames hide? He has not wondered this before. Assassin has been naught but a tool. Little more than an automaton. Kiritsugu isn't sure what has changed. "**I believe I will be able to, but I do not know what will happen when I do. Its death throes may not be peaceful. It has begun, and it will be resistant to end."**

Kiritsugu nods, head thudding in time with the movement. "We'll take it somewhere else, then." His mind starts running through lists of probabilities, places where the damage could be minimized. _Kill the few to save the many_. His vision wavers, and he fights the tears. People will die regardless of the action he takes. The fuse is lit. Now it is only a question of degree.

"**Not far. Time is short." **He does not elaborate. Maybe he doesn't know how long they have either.

If time is short and they cannot leave Fuyuki, if they cannot take it somewhere no one is… There is only one option. "The park," Kiritsugu says heavily. "Where you fought Archer. It's a big place. If there is a backlash…" If there is a backlash, people will die. _Kill one to save a thousand._ It was how he had lived his life. It was how he structured his philosophy and his morality. How he justified every horrific choice.

Now he can see it for what it was.

An excuse.

A cowardly excuse for a monster.

He vomits again, but at least this time it isn't mud.

"**I do not know of a better place nearby,"** Assassin assents when he has finished heaving. "**My existence is created by the grace of the Holy Grail. I do not know what will happen if I were to enter its corruption."**

Kiritsugu grimaces. He is so tired. He has felt weariness before, but this… It would have been unimaginable to him before. His work is not done, and so he cannot rest.

He can die when the Grail is no more. Not before.

He has promises to keep.

Miles to go before he sleeps.

(He will never sleep peacefully again.

Not until his final rest.

He will welcome its embrace.)

"I'll carry it," he rasps. "It's already done its worst to me. I'm already cursed."

Time skips.

_The gentle waves lap at his feet._

_What do you want to be, Kerry?_

He stands before the golden cup, and he does not remember approaching it. He does not remember if Assassin responded to him. He knows what he must do.

_You won't have time to gather your things._

"I'm so sorry, Iri," he whispers, and his fingers close around its base.

_You are my real family._

Immediately, his hand is engulfed in mud, and it crawls and burns and seeps into his skin. It is freezing, and it burns the flesh from his bones, but of course it doesn't. He is not immune, but he has been inoculated. He can tolerate this for a little while, at least. He lifts the chalice, and it must weigh thirty pounds or more. He can barely do it. Another ragged breath, and his lips move. "Assassin. If I fall before I get to the center of the park, wherever I am, I need you to destroy the Grail. Nothing else matters."

"**I understand."**

The next part will either kill him or buy him time, but it is worth the risk. What power he has left, he concentrates into his fingertips. His hands buzz and tingle with magical energy straining to be released. This magic is difficult when he works it upon himself; it is nearly impossible when he tries to use it externally. "Time alter," he gasps. "Triple stagnate."

(He does not know it now, but his circuits burn

out, one by one, as he suppresses the curse.

By the time he is finished, he will only have

magical energy enough for one final spell.)

The threads of magical energy wind around the cup like ropes, binding and expanding until its surface is entirely covered by the power. The principle is not dissimilar to a Reality Marble, but this is much more localized. Much less of an imposition on reality. The mud flowing from the chalice boils in slow motion, seeming to return to normal speed once it was no longer in contact with the gold.

His whole body burns. His whole body aches. He wants to lie down and sleep. He wants to lie down and die. But his work is not _done._

His body is not his. His consciousness tries to fade, but he does not allow it.

He takes the first step.

* * *

The journey is interminable. He no longer possesses the ability to measure time or distance, and each step is the new worst moment of his life. He is shattered and rebuilt and shattered again.

(To Sever and Bind.

It is not a healing gift.

It will never be.)

Every footfall is the last. How could he possibly lift his foot again? But of course, he does. Muscles screaming, body crying out for rest, he walks. Assassin is by his side. He will not let Assassin touch the Grail; not until the moment he must smite it with his sword, but Assassin does not let him fall. He does not express sympathy or pity. Kiritsugu knows almost nothing of his partner in this War, but he suspects the Servant understands something fundamental about his dedication to this duty.

They have not quite reached the dead center of the park when Kiritsugu's ankle crumples, and he falls to his knees. He still grips the Grail in a white-knuckled grip, the black mud smear following behind him like a slug's slime trail of liquid death. His breath is choppy and painful, and from head to toe, his nerves burn. (He begins to suspect what is happening to him, now.) He looks up at Assassin, and the burning blue eyes gaze down at him dispassionately.

(There are tears streaming down Kiritsugu's face.

His hands are badly burned and will never be right again.

He doesn't notice this.)

"**Set the Grail down here," **Assassin commands. Assassin has _never _commanded him to do anything, but in this moment, it is exactly what Kiritsugu needs to hear. "**Get as far away from this place as thee can manage. I will wait as long as I am able to strike the final blow."**

Kiritsugu looks down at the monstrous thing clutched in his shaking hands. "If it goes off, I don't know if I can get away in time." Not that he deserves to. "I don't know what it'll—"

"**This will not be thine end,"** Assassin says, and Kiritsugu had not known the black knight could sound so gentle. "**The Evening Bell does not toll for thee this night."**

(When Kiritsugu fades away, five years later,

when he bids a moonlit goodbye to the only

family he has left that he has not betrayed,

he will hear the bell, and he will smile.)

Kiritsugu meets Assassin's gaze one final time. The blue flame seems to burn eternal in that last moment. He feels no fear. On an instinctual level, Kiritsugu understands something, and it will take him months to wrap his mind around what it is.

(There is still work that is left unfinished.

Something only he can do.

Assassin knows that he will find his reason to live.

Or maybe he just believes.)

What last words will suffice? What final notes could fit this meaningless symphony of blood and death? Everything he can imagine rings hollow. Kiritsugu nods unsteadily. "You're a good man, Hassan. Thank you." His voice cracks, but from what, even he isn't entirely sure.

Assassin nods back, unflinching in the face of true Evil. All the evils of the world, gathered in one place, in the hands of one broken, unworthy man. "**I am neither, Contractor, but we may yet set this right. Meet thy destiny with eyes forward and head held high."**

Kiritsugu opens his mouth, but there is nothing to say. Finally, with an agonized groan, he lets the time magic fade. The boiling mud redoubles, pouring faster onto the ground, sloshing over his blackened skin.

He lets the Grail fall.

Kiritsugu Emiya does not think he can walk another step, but in the end, he runs.

(As far as he can, but not far enough.)

In the end, he survives the torrent of flame and death.

(Not immune, but inoculated.)

In the end, he finds the boy.

(The Origin Rounds were made to kill.)

Sever and bind.

(Made from the dust of his own rib.)

He is (they are) dying.

(They form the backbone of Kiritsugu

Emiya's final spell.)

He saves the child.

(He severs a piece of his own spirit.)

He pulls the boy back from the brink.

(Does his best to fill in the holes.

Patches stitched over what is missing.)

But his magic cannot truly heal.

(Every Origin Round he has remaining,

arranged in a circle, become the catalyst.

His last circuits burn out. A magus no longer.)

All he can do is cauterize.


	23. The First Dawn

**ACT 2: SHADE WITHOUT COLOR**

* * *

_A brief content warning: This chapter has some real dark mental health shit. If you find discussion of a character dealing with feeling suicidal upsetting, I don't want it to take you by surprise._

* * *

Something was happening, and Sakura was fairly sure Grandfather was at the center of it. There was nothing else in the world. Could Senpai feel it? Could Rin? She didn't know.

It started with goosebumps.

A shiver.

Something was wrong, but when was that ever not true? She'd tried to ignore it, the way she might any bout of creeping anxiety. She was trying to sleep in the second strange house in two nights, after all; she was intimately familiar with the Emiya residence, but she'd never _stayed the night_ before. Surely anyone would be nervous about that kind of thing. Senpai was a boy, after all, and such things were simply not done. Not by the kind of girl she was trying so hard to be, anyway. Especially when the boy in question was-

What was he to her?

It was getting harder and harder to avoid thinking about.

_You're using him_, she told herself. _You just want him to care about you because he's someone who you know how to trick into it._ It was something her own cruel voice had told her before, but it felt different tonight. _Care_ took on different connotations. _He's just who happens to be most convenient. You wormed your way into his life, and we all know what kind of a worm you are, don't we?_

_(_His strong arms around her.)

_What kind of things you'd do to make sure he loved you?_

(His gentle fingers in her hair.)

_You are not a good person, Sakura Matou. You would debase yourself out of a desperate fear of being alone, because you fear that which you deserve._

(The warmth of his breath.)

_But then, haven't you already?_

_You're stained. You're filthy._

_Filthy filthy filthy filthyfilthyfilthyfilthy-_

She smiled sadly up at the ceiling. She hated sleeping, because she couldn't escape from the nightmares, but she hated this part more. The part where she was alone in the dark. The part where her own mind tried its best to tear itself to pieces more efficiently than Grandfather's worms had ever managed. Her heart was thick and calloused. She wouldn't break — she'd proven that to herself long ago — but that didn't stop the hatred from gnawing her hollow.

The chill morphed into a kind of buzzing in the back of her mind, and noticing the change broke her out of her spiral, for just a moment. That was a magic feeling. She was sensing something…

She didn't know what. Otherworldly. Magic wasn't easy to define, but you knew it when you saw—

Sakura felt somebody die.

She gasped.

_Did I… _was all the time she had to think before another person died. There was a life, somewhere, vibrant and alive, and then… there wasn't. A void where a human being had once been. And then, a loose pebble flowing into a landslide, those deaths echoed and reverberated and harmonized, and the feeling of it filled her until she was sure she would overflow and death itself would pour from her mouth and her eyes and her ears and drown everything.

There was nowhere for her to go. Nowhere for her to hide. The killing thing was already inside her.

But now, lying in bed, wrapped in her blankets as tight as she could cocoon herself, she could feel it. The fear. The panic and confusion. The sudden loss of self. People were being ripped to pieces by cruel magic, and she felt every single death in her mind and her heart and her throat.

Sakura was attuned to death, and people were dying. Badly.

She couldn't do anything about it.

Her body was hollow and filled with guilt.

But if she moved, they'd know.

_Know what?_

Know that she was connected to that dark magic. Know that she wasn't to be trusted. Know that she was a bad person.

Rin and Senpai could never know. _They will, someday. Probably soon._ But she would do everything she could to put that day off as long as possible.

So people died, distantly (but not distantly enough) and she drew the blankets around herself. Tighter. Trying to take some comfort in the pressure. She shivered. Sweat drenched her face and her sheets. Even if she wanted to stop it, how could she? She had no power. No direction. Danger screamed in her skull like cacophonous alarms, and she had nothing to mollify it with.

Dark thoughts swirled around her like gnats, and she swatted at them, desperate, as if they were something physical that she could scare away. _Your fault. Your doing. Stop it. Stop the killing. Why won't you stop it why won't you stop it why-_

People died.

She pressed her palms into her ears, painfully so, as if the death were something as simple as a _sound _she could just _block out. _It pounded within her, corrupting every cell, every nerve, every fiber of her very being. Would she still be Sakura after this? Had she ever been, or was Sakura (Tohsaka) Matou just the pretty little lie she told herself so that she could sleep?

Sakura whimpered.

Grandfather was doing something horrific, and in some way that she didn't understand, he was drawing upon her to do it. Drawing on her, or through her, ripping pieces out of her, draining her of she-didn't-even-know-what. Some secret part of her that even she didn't know existed, and-

The death stopped. Whatever Grandfather was doing, it was over. She gasped and heaved with the sudden release, goosebumps raising almost _painfully_ over every inch of skin. Something moved under her skin, but of course nothing actually was.

_What have I done?_

The fact that she _hadn't_ done anything was immaterial. That feeling… That horrible feeling…

Was there a part of her that had enjoyed it?

Had she relished the distant killing?

No. That was too horrible to contemplate.

And yet. And yet.

What if-

_No._

But-

_**No.**_

Her hands grasped painfully at the sleeves of the pink shirt she'd borrowed from Rin. Squeezing. Squeezing. Her breath was shaky and panicked. She squeezed her eyes shut, tight. _Breathe. Breathe. Breathe._

_I can't breathe!_

Her chest. There was something wrong with her chest. Somewhere deep in her ribcage, something was _wrong. _Something was wrong wrong _wrong-_

Her heart thudded. Thudded. Thudded.

Stopped.

Her eyes widened, and her mouth worked, and her nails clawed at her skin, as if she could dig to it and restart its beat with her bare hands, and she knew there was blood under her nails but it didn't matter because if it didn't start beating again-

Thud. Thud. Thud.

thudthudthudthudthud

_THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD_

There was fire in her chest and it was burning her from the inside out and she was blackening and cracking and coming apart burning burning BURNING

Her teeth clamped down hard over a building scream, and she tasted blood. Her body bucked and convulsed, electricity pouring through her, but what was worst was her chest was her chest was her HEART

ALL THERE IS

IS FIRE

_am i dying _

_is this a heart attack_

Everything began to fade.

_is this _

_death_

Blackness pulsed at the edges of her vision.

_if it is _

_if it is death_

Thinking was almost impossible, and she could feel some piece of her slipping away.

_then maybe_

_its for the best_

As if that thought had flipped a switch, the pain was gone, whatever had caused it burnt away. The feeling of death lingered, as though a part of _her_ was now dead, burnt to ash along with all the other people somewhere so very far away. A cough escaped her as her throat convulsed, and she made a soft, pathetic sound as they trailed off.

_Pathetic._

She stared up at the ceiling. There was no strength left in her for anything more than that. She was cold. She was so cold, so cold, so cold…. Her teeth chattered, her body shuddered, even wrapped as she still was in blankets. A trickle of blood from where she'd bitten her lip ran down her chin. There was wetness on her face that she didn't think was sweat. She'd been crying, but now she just felt…

Empty.

That wasn't a new feeling. She _was_ empty, after all. Hollow, hollow, hollow. A ceramic doll with nothing inside. A single nesting doll without its family.

_You deserve this._

She was so thirsty. Her throat felt as raw as if she'd screamed for an hour, but the pain hadn't lasted that long, and besides, if she'd screamed, Senpai would be breaking her door down right this moment. He would have been by her side in an instant, no matter what she did to keep him away.

She'd stayed quiet, and she thanked whoever would listen to a wretch like her for that.

She couldn't move. There was nothing left. At least she could sleep. At least she could fade into something resembling blissful unconsciousness, and enjoy a brief respite from her constant torments.

The air grew heavy around her. A presence, drawing closer. One thing, then another, then another. No time to rest. But then, when had she ever had time to rest, really? Without the nightmares and the paranoia and the pain? It was fitting, if it was anything.

Above her, two points of blue light flickered to life, and Assassin's massive frame followed a moment later, little more than shadow in the darkness. He held his massive sword in one dark hand. He hadn't had that when Senpai had brought him out for the first time.

Had he ever even acknowledged her presence before?

She looked up into those blue eyes, and with every bit of strength she could muster, calm, quiet, and without fear, asked the question she'd been wondering since Senpai had joined the war.

"Are you going to kill me?"

* * *

The swordsman had never held all the answers. To think such a thing would have been the highest arrogance; as he had said two days and an eternity ago at the church, Allah Himself was greater than man could ever comprehend, and that extended to all aspects of His creation. That was part of the beauty of the world. Whatever Magi and scholars and philosophers had argued for millennia untold, existence and perception were not things that could ever be fully understood.

Understanding, such as it was, came from experience, and no one existence could experience everything there was.

The swordsman had never experienced a feeling like this. He had seen things that should not be. He had killed those that should never have existed. He had witnessed events that were, plainly, impossible. He was an ambulatory contradiction, and he knew this.

But never had the world itself ever felt so polluted. Never had reality ever felt so much like a peaceful mountain stream, clogged with rotting corpses.

Not many things shook the swordsman.

This shook him. This scared him.

He could not remember the last time that he had felt fear.

The aimlessness of his task frightened him most of all. His goals had been clear for so long that he almost didn't remember how to _discover_. A thought recurred, and always he dismissed it, but he could not entirely banish it. What if _he_ was the rot? What if _his _death was what would fix what ailed the world?

He did not understand why he felt such a thing. Suicide had never been an option for him, and if he was here, he was here to fix the imbalance, not to cause it. To cause such a thing would be to deny every belief he held so dear.

A pervasive death hung over the city, and he could not sense its focus. Without a direction, he had no way to act. His one consolation was that whatever this was, it was _not_ what he and Archer had taken to calling the cataclysm.

He would know when it was imminent.

The ripples were still distinct. They did not bleed together the way they would before the moment of catastrophe.

For a few seconds, there had been something. A clue, one that only an individual as attuned to the divine as he could have seen. A tether, or perhaps what the people of this time would perceive as a power line. A rope of divine judgement made manifest. Like a flame burning down a wick, this stream of white-hot holy fire followed some pre-existing path as it cleansed.

It had led him to the girl.

The girl looked up at him, and he looked down at her.

She lay in her twisted, sweat-soaked sheets, and her face was sickly grey, her purple eyes half-lidded with weakness. Her hair, normally so long and beautiful, was matted and soaked. Her breath was slow and heavy in a way that made an image spring unbidden from his past — someone wreathed in shadow, their face lost to time, preparing to die from some long-forgotten disease as he'd sat by their bedside one last time. The girl's breath sounded like that person's had. There was fresh blood on the front of her shirt; blood under her nails.

There was no fear in her eyes. Not many could meet his eyes and say the same. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked in a voice that broke on every vowel, that hissed out in a shattered whisper that held within it the promise of hope.

The hope for a quiet end.

He didn't answer at first. He was not a man who liked to rush the judgement of a life.

"**That remains to be seen,"** he said to her. She gave him a polite smile out of what could only be a deep-seated reflex; she had no energy for such things.

"Senpai said that you show yourself to people before you kill them," she whispered, and there was no emotion to the words. "So I thought you might… be here for that." Her eyes fluttered as her consciousness seemed to waver, and beads of sweat sprang anew on her pale forehead.

He understood a great many things, but he did not understand what he sensed in Sakura Matou. Not since the moment he had first laid eyes on her, since he first sensed the darkness that dwelt deep within her. A part of her, but separate. Asleep, but awake. Hungry, yet almost content.

In the last few minutes, something had changed. Had the shadow been burnt away? Had it been awakened? Had it been cleansed? Whether it was for the better or the worse…

It remained to be seen.

"**What art thou, Sakura Matou?"**

A look of confusion passed like a shadow over her slack face. "What am I?" She looked away, and her eyes were the only part of her that moved. "A monster," she breathed. "But you know that already."

"**And what manner of monster art thou?"**

"The worst kind," she said. "The kind that tricks people into thinking she's a good person. You know, don't you? You can see. I couldn't fool you." Her words were leaden. "I don't know what just happened. I felt… death. And then pain," she said, and her voice broke again. "But I'm okay with pain. I'm pretty good at taking that."

He did not reply. Was this girl broken, or was she made strong by her suffering? The line between the two was fine, and sometimes nonexistent. Adversity could strengthen, but it could just as easily destroy. Stretch a rope too tight, and it will snap. That wasn't weakness. That was the limit of a mortal mind. There wasn't any beauty in the kind of pain that tore a person's heart to shreds.

Was this girl worth the risk of saving? Was there a soul left _to _save?

"If you want me to tell you whatever it was you felt…" She looked tired and frustrated. "I can't. I'm useless."

"**I promised Shirou Emiya that I would not harm thee unless given cause,"** Assassin said frankly. "**I wish to determine if what I have sensed constitutes such a cause."**

Sakura remained silent.

He examined her. The swordsman possessed no third eye that could reveal one's secrets, but he had spent more time around the living than anyone alive. "**I see scars on thy soul, Sakura Matou," **he said. "**Scars alone do not make a monster."**

"Please don't," she said, and somehow managed to sound even more tired than she already did. "I know what I am. All those people died, and I enjoyed it. I wanted to see it. I wanted to be a part of it. For all I know…" She chewed her lip. "For all I know, I was part of it."

"**Is thy wish for death so powerful?" **In the swordsman's long career, he had seen people beg for his blade countless times. It never had any bearing on whether or not they received it. "**I am not the judge, Sakura Matou. I am merely the executioner. Should thou list thy sins before me, it would not change thy fate. Thy judgement is not in my hands. Nor is it in thine."**

The shaking girl just looked… defeated. Relief and fear and anger, all at the same time. She was too tired to even mask what she felt, and to this girl, masking came as naturally as breathing. She wanted to argue. She wanted him to kill her. He could see the struggle plain on her face.

She did not have the strength to say the words.

No, that was incorrect. The coward's path would have been to throw herself onto his sword. This girl, as deeply mired in self loathing as she was… A part of her wanted badly to live.

Interesting.

"**My Contractor said something to me yesterday that I have thought much upon. Everyone that has lived or will ever live has a dark side. The mortal mind is weak, and prone to thoughts of sin and cruelty. Sakura Matou. Thy dark side is powerful, and I believe it may consume thee."**

The girl flinched as much as she could, the last remaining dregs of life spilling from her empty eyes, curling in on herself like burning parchment. "What if it already has?"

"**Shirou Emiya believes in thy will to overcome. Shirou Emiya believes that thou wilt be able to rise above the stain on thy spirit. Shirou Emiya believes in Sakura Matou."**

Her eyes widened in a quiet gasp; a look of wonder that was quickly overtaken by one of self-hatred and doubt.

The swordsman lifted his sword, then placed it tip-down beside her bare neck. The razor-sharp edge, with the slightest touch, drew a trickle of blood.

The girl didn't react, even as a drop of her blood traced the black steel down to the sheets.

"**Out of respect for my Contractor, I offer thee a choice. If thou believe that thy fate is already sealed, then cut thine own throat. Thou art weak, but it should not take much effort to open thy veins. Simply turn thy head, and thy life will be ended." **

She shook, and her breath came fast and frightened.

"**But if thou believe that hope yet remains, keep thy life. Prove that my Contractor's loyalty is not misplaced. Fight against that which thy soul strains to become unto thy final breath."**

More blood ran down the blade. A small pool was forming on the floor under her, and still, she did not move. Not to remove the blade. Not to end her life. Her eyes were pleading.

Pleading for him to kill her, and pleading him not to leave the choice to her.

"**I will not make this choice for thee."**

She closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. A tear rolled down one cheek, and her violent shaking intensified, as though she could kill herself that way, without having to make the choice herself.

The swordsman waited.

Finally, the girl broke. "I won't," she gasped in a quiet sob. "I won't, I can't, I won't…" Her protestation dissolved into tears that were almost silent. "I can't do it…" The swordsman pulled the blade away, careful to allow no further harm to come to her in the process. One trembling hand reached up to press against the bloody cut as she continued to sob.

"**Holding one's head high to fight a battle one does not think can be won is not cowardice," **the swordsman said with finality, "**if the cause is just and the heart is true. Thou shalt fight, Sakura Matou. I shall pray for thy peace, and I give my word that, should the worst come to pass, I will stand ready to ensure no harm shall come to either thy sister or the man thee love."**

Without watching waiting for a reply, the swordsman allowed himself to dematerialize. There was nothing left to say. She had resolved to fight in her heart, even though she saw it as weakness. He left the room without another word. Her bell had not tolled. It had not been her time.

His question had been answered, and he had no interest in watching a young girl suffer.

* * *

There's no way to encapsulate the experience of being mortal for the first time. How do you describe the way flesh hangs heavy on your bones, when all you have ever been is light and stardust? How can you encapsulate the rush of joy, or the cold wash of fear, or the bubbling electricity of laughter, when all you have ever known is a cold and distant logic?

I stand on solid Earth for the first time, and I feel a part of it in a way I've never known before. The world is real and I am mortal. To a degree, anyway. It's strange; I remember everything Kirei did, as though I were always he. I also remember everything Azrael did, as though I were he as well.

I am both, and I am neither.

Still. The name Abaddon feels right.

I've never watched a sunrise that wasn't choked with blood. I'm sitting on a bridge, my feet dangling over the edge; the bridge is hard and cold and solid beneath me, and my breath mists the air like puffy wisps of cloud. It's never done that before.

An angel only breathes to put mortal minds at ease.

The two Servants who have joined me are with me. I did not want to be alone, for I have been alone for millennia. The girl — Medb — sits beside me, childlike wonder on her face, and Kirei tells me that she is cruel and conniving beneath the mask. The man — Cu Chulainn — leans against a beam behind me, keeping an eye out for anyone who might do us harm. He is not given pause by the beauty of the sight before us, but I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The old Kirei tells me he is not to be trusted either, but Azrael tells me that he trusts me more now than he ever did Kirei.

Kirei was a bad man, but so was Azrael. Maybe the new one can be something better.

Would Kirei have made a better horseman? Would Azrael have made a better priest? The question is academic, but still, I wonder. Azrael did not feel guilt, but he did question the logic under which he was made to operate. Was the scale of his killing justified? Was he a monster, or did he do the job he was built for so that others could live?

He never figured out the answer to that question.

I feel guilt.

I feel guilt so strongly I can barely stand, and the lump of meat they call a stomach curdles and burns me from the inside out. If mortals feel such things so powerfully, how do any of them ever function? I must follow their example, and emulate their strength.

_Azrael stood tall as the world burned, breathing in the smoke like a mortal breathed in oxygen. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he felt nothing. His Locust swept through a city not dissimilar from Fuyuki, and soon there would be nothing left. This was always the beginning of the end. The cleansing of a world. There was an order to things, and when events pushed a timeline too far, when the threat to existence or the Root or God became too great, he ate away the rot. A blighted tree would die if the disease was not cut out. This, he thinks dispassionately as he watches a young mother cut to shreds by snapping mandibles and chittering claws, is the tragedy of mortality. Her blood pools on the asphalt, and the Locust moves on to her children. No scrap of life could remain once certain lines were crossed._

_Still, it seemed such a waste. Azrael felt nothing, but he saw the flaws in the logic. An end to the bloodshed was a distant hypothetical problem to solve, like a soldier doing multiplication tables in his head to keep himself sane._

_The streets ran with blood, and Azrael watched another world burn._

The first fingers of light creep over the distant horizon. Rays of light caress the boats in the harbor below like old lovers. It's beautiful. The sky is a reddish pink, but it doesn't remind me of blood, because today, for me, nobody needs to die. It is the first sunrise that has ever been worth seeing. Cu Chulainn does not react to it. Medb gasps and grabs at my tattered sleeve, and I almost believe that she can see the same beauty I can. The sunrise is clean, but she smells of blood.

It's beautiful. It's wonderful.

I am moved to tears once again.

Behind me, the rush of cars continues unabated. I have seen cars before. I have watched my Locust rip them apart to get at the soft mortal center at their core. They are so fragile. Mortals are so fragile. How can they be blamed for looking for answers in the wrong places when their lives are so short? When their flesh is so weak?

_Kirei stood over his wife's corpse, his fingers wrapped around her neck. And he squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, but no matter how cruel and unyielding his grip became, she wouldn't die. She was already dead. She had died before he had ever touched her. That was a shame. Disappointment flooded him as he released her corpse, letting it fall back to the hospital bed like a limp mannequin._

_Too soon. She'd died too soon._

_Her death had been supposed to tell him what he was, but he had waited too long, and the saint had not died a martyr. _

_She'd just died._

_Why had he waited?_

_His answers would need to come elsewhere._

Kirei had been a broken man who was born broken. The only thing he had ever taken joy in was in the suffering of others. The loss of hope and the despair and the death. He was a monster.

But had _he_ had any more of a choice than Azrael had? Both creatures had been created a certain way, and neither could escape that, no matter how they strained. Azrael had questioned his Lord, and tried to imagine another way. Kirei had tried to live a quiet, peaceful life. In the end, both had succumbed to their bonds. Neither could become something they weren't.

"We are the hollow men," I whisper, and do not know from what long-abandoned corner of my — their — mind the words come. "Shape without form." Something half remembered. Something that held meaning to someone, sometime.

And now, both are free.

I am free.

And with my freedom, I watch the sun rise on a new day.

The symbolism is hamfisted, but it symbolism that I have chosen for myself, and that makes it beautiful. It is the moment that will mark the beginning of the rest of my existence.

Behind me, Cu Chulainn speaks offhandedly. "So what now, boss man?" He is conflicted. That's obvious. He doesn't know what he wants the answer to be. He is curious, and he is struggling with a loss of purpose. If I do not participate in the Holy Grail War that he and Kirei were a part of, then his existence is meaningless. I understand this. My own existence doesn't seem to have much meaning at the moment. "Actually, scratch that. Whatever we do, can we kick that bitch over there to the curb first? She's only going to cause trouble."

At my side, Medb pouts. It's very convincing. If Kirei did not know her true nature, I might have been fooled. "Oh, be nice, darling Cu. If I was going to do something—"

"You wouldn't have a chance," Cu Chulainn says dryly, "because me and Abaddon would kick your ass."

"Like you did last time?" she says sweetly. "That was okay as a warm-up, but you still owe me a real fight. And besides! You said it yourself. I can't touch either of you at the moment, and I'm not _stupid_, so why not trust me?" She wraps herself around my arm like some kind of ornament, and her small body is warm and soft. There is a part of me that relishes the contact, targeted and conniving though it is. I have never known affection, after all. "I want to make sure Abaddon gets comfortable in this world."

I'm not sure what her goal is. Idle curiosity? Fear of my power? I don't think it's fear. Perhaps a desire of the flesh, although I have no interest in such things. Cu Chulainn believes that this is her motivation. He says that Medb is a hedonist of the most powerful variety. I am unconcerned. She has no power over me. If I find a goal of my own, that may change, but for now, I enjoy their presence.

They are not my friends, but they could be.

I have never had friends. I never had the capacity.

If Kirei could not form attachments, and Azrael could not form attachments, but I can, then what does that make me? I don't know. Maybe that aspect of me is a reflection of the man Azrael might have been had he been born mortal.

"Yeah, you're not going to make an angel your new boy toy," Cu Chulainn says, and I can hear the roll of his eyes in his voice. "So good luck with that."

Medb scoffs. "I want to do no such thing! Look at him. He's like a puppy. You do know how much I love dogs, Cu."

Even I can detect the insincerity. Power attracts power, like a moth to flame.

"Never get sick of that one," he grumbles.

"Then why are you here?" she asks, wide eyes gazing out at the sun sparkling over the river. The light is reflected in them, and I begin to suspect that some part of her wonder is not an act. This woman takes pleasure in the simple things as much as she does in the cruelty.

This woman cut off the arm that she is holding. The memory comes to me suddenly. I am not particularly bothered by this. Neither Kirei nor Azrael take such things personally, and so, neither do I.

Cu Chulainn does not seem to know how to answer. "He's my master, isn't he?" he said, but it sounded like a deflection. "I've gotta stick around and make sure he doesn't get killed."

"Because you've always been such a good little soldier boy, following orders and stuff." Medb sighs, and trails a gentle finger in circles down the numb white carapace of my arm. "Please, Cu. He could squash both of us like bugs and not even break a sweat. That's not the real reason."

(I do not know if this is true. Azrael could have, but I am constrained by flesh, now, and besides, I am also Kirei. What I am capable of remains to be seen, but I don't particularly care at this moment.)

"Then maybe—"

Medb cuts him off, her eyes narrowing as a smile spreads her across her lips. She looks like a child getting away with something she shouldn't. "You just want an excuse to spend time with me," she says with a happy sigh, "don't you, Cu? You know you're supposed to hate me, but you just can't stay away…"

I have told them that they are not to hurt each other in my presence, but I can see Cu Chulainn fight against the geas. I do not know why my words have the effect they do on him. Perhaps it is a quirk of the bond Kirei and he shared before my summoning. They are natural enemies. Perhaps it is cruel of me to keep them so close to hand, but I do not want to be alone, and they are all that I have.

I stand slowly, and the bickering ceases. Both of them look to me. I inhale slowly, exhale slower. I am still not used to the feeling of cool air in my lungs, though a mortal feels such things every moment of every day. "Apparently," I say. "A Pseudoservant still needs to eat." The weaknesses of the flesh. The transcendence. "Why don't we get breakfast?"

* * *

_The reaction to the end of act one was so much more positive than I was expecting, so thank you all so much!_

_I do have one thing I kinda want to get out in front of though, regarding the interlude - I got a lot of comments assuming this, but I don't think it's actually explicit canon that Avalon is what made Shirou a sword boy. It's a thing I see a lot, but it's not really something I buy into. He's just a sword boy. I see it as a special interest and a mirror to his seeing himself as a weapon for justice more than anything. I just don't want to string anyone along that he won't do cool shit with swords._

_The Sakura scene draws on a lot of very real shit I've experienced and been close to. If anyone's there right now, at least know that I've been there too, and that it isn't all that you'll ever be._

_Thanks for reading and sticking around and commenting, everyone. Love y'all._

_Next Chapter: Where Do We Go From Here?_


	24. Where Do We Go From Here?

_Slight content warning for the Shinji POV at the end of the chapter; I don't have him think about assault directly, but he does think some really degrading shit about Sakura._

* * *

_The poison was still in him._

_Chimeric venom was an especially cruel form of punishment. In some ways, it was less poison than it was a kind of magical, biological acid — inorganic things like glass and steel would be left untouched, but it would consume anything living. A drop of chimeric venom in a person's veins would kill them in hours, but that was no mercy — it would be a painful, agonizing death as every cell in their body was eroded and burned and dissolved. Enough of a dose, and all that would be left of the victim would be a pile of bloody mush. It wasn't a common tool, even then; there was a common understanding that such a thing was too horrific for the average murder. There were things that killed more quickly, and things that killed more subtly. It was a tool of retribution, not practicality._

_The swordsman's assailants had each coated their weapons with the venom, and each had struck true more than once. There could be no agony greater — but as the swordsman was not allowed to die, the venom was never allowed to run its course. Every vein in his body burned with an agony greater than imagining from the moment of his awakening to the swordsman's present. Everything the venom touched was aflame._

_I didn't have a body in this dream, but tingles ran down every single one of my nerves. The pain wasn't exact — but it was __**familiar**__. I wanted to tremble and shake. I wanted to look away, but the dreams weren't mine to control. I saw what I saw._

_The pain I felt when he made himself material. The pain he felt every moment of every day for a thousand years. That burning, infinite agony._

_Were they the same?_

_I imagined the way my entire being had been consumed by it. I remembered the cold fear that gripped me when I'd had the chance to order him to fight Berserker. I remembered the way nothing else had existed but that torture._

_I tried to imagine feeling that way for as long as he had._

_I couldn't. I recoiled from the idea._

_Something smaller, then. A fraction of the time. A year. What would be left of me after feeling that way for a year?_

_I couldn't imagine that either._

_A month. A week. A day. The idea of even surviving for so long was laughable, and my mind refused to grapple with the idea._

_An hour, then. To imagine holding that pain within me for one single, solitary hour. I don't think there would be anything left of me after an hour of that kind of pain. Even if my body still breathed, everything that made Shirou Emiya a person would have been wiped clean. What was the longest I'd endured? Five minutes? Ten? _

_He'd endured for years beyond counting._

_Did he even notice it anymore? If I was in his head, would it even bear consideration? How was there anything left of him? How could there be anything connecting the man he'd been with the personification of death he had become? _

_There wasn't, I realized with a kind of dawning horror. There __**wasn't**_ _anything left. Nothing but-_

_At that moment, I understood something. _

_In this one absolute, unshakable, fundamental way, we were the same._

_My fire, the one that had burned away the comfortable life I'd lived for eight years, had scoured and scorched my heart clean. It burned there still, within my chest, and I kept it fed with my ideal. I kept it sated — kept it from hungering and spreading — by feeding it anything that kept me from becoming the hero of justice I swore I would become. It wasn't wrong. It wasn't bad. It was who I wanted to be._

_His fire was in his blood. _

_If I lived forever, how long would it take for me to become him?_

_Or would I just... break?_

* * *

"Then what do you propose we do?" Souichirou sat upright in the bed, arms crossed before him. Normally, the sight of him without his shirt on would have been enough to whip her into a frenzy, but she was caught in the throes of a much different agitation, and so had no brainspace left over for desire.

"I don't _know_," Caster said, pacing the small, barely-furnished bedroom as intensely as a caged predator tracing the dimensions of its cage. "I don't know, Souichirou, and that's what terrifies me. I can't even see what _happened_."

This felt like the hundredth time she'd stumbled over the words, and she knew that no matter what she said to Souichirou that he wouldn't understand the magnitude. For a brief second, she envied him. She shot him a glance, and she could feel the wild eyed panic in her face. Her hair was a mess, sticking out this way and that. He never cared, but right now, she _wanted_ him to see her panic. She wanted for everyone to know that this was _wrong_. "I don't _know_. Do you know how often that happens?"

"Never," he said firmly, though it was obviously a guess. Still, it was the answer she was looking for. He was very good at playing along, and she needed the stability of not having to think any more than she already was.

"_Never!" _She had not slept all night, not that she needed such things, but neither had she managed to get any of her nightly preparations done, either. Sleep made her feel mortal again, and engaging in her routines made her feel in control. She was very out of control and feeling very, _very _small. She did not like it.

Her mind kept turning to the maelstrom of chaotic energies that had engulfed several distant city blocks. "Never, Souichirou. I am very, very good at magic, and I couldn't scry that spell at _all. _It was hardly a spell. It was..." She gestured impotently at her scrying glass like a petulant child. "I don't know!"

Slowly, deliberately — much as he did everything — Souichirou pulled himself off the bed and stood. He towered over her, but it had never intimidated her, the way another might have. Intimidated was the wrong word, because it implied fear; maybe suspicion would be a better term for it.

She paced anyway. She paced in increasing agitation, growing more and more stressed at the confinement and her situation. It wasn't her confinement, not really, but she had to blame something other than her own _inability_. She almost scoffed at the idea, but that would have taken a few extra motes of brain space.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven steps, _turn._

Caster was not a woman who was given to panic. Not anymore, anyway. Not since she'd had to lose everything she cared about, and then to lose it all again. Once you've been betrayed that cruelly, there isn't a lot that can faze you.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven steps, _turn._

It wasn't the death that scared her. She'd killed more than her fair share, herself. She'd seen even more fall at the hands of others for silly, petty little things. Medea did not fear, and she certainly did not fear death.

She did not fear the outpouring of power, either. She'd lived in a world where the gods still walked among humanity, and she had seen rituals and spells that would have put this one to shame. She'd seen civilizations burn. She'd seen famine and plague kill most of the world where a god deemed it fit. She'd seen so much but never anything like this.

One, two, three-

Souichirou's hand, solid and immovable and warm, grasped her upper arm, and she stopped out of nothing more than sheer reflex. He was gazing down at her coolly, but that was just him — the coldness meant nothing when it came from him because he simply didn't know another way to be. He didn't move further. Not to kiss her, not to smile at her, not even so much as to hold her.

Warmth fluttered in her chest all the same, and she smiled weakly.

"You are the greatest Magus who has ever lived, Medea," he said. He only ever used her true name when they were truly alone, but it gave her butterflies every single time. "Whatever this thing is that has happened, there is no one more equipped to deal with it than you."

Medea returned his gaze for three long heartbeats, then sighed softly; she turned toward him and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his unyielding chest. The arm that rested on her forearm slid to her back, barely exerting pressure. A pretty weak hug, had it been anyone but him.

For the first time that night, she felt some modicum of peace, though her relationship with it was tenuous at best. It would stay until he let go, so she dared not to move.

"Do you think you should speak with the girl?" he asked levelly.

"I'd like to stay here a moment longer, first," she replied softly.

* * *

Artoria's Master approached, the click of her footsteps on the heavy stone steps echoing down the quiet mountain. The world was still a grayish haze; the birds were only beginning to awaken, and so, the silence was almost total. It was peaceful. That was the one good thing about these damned stairs — it could be truly beautiful here.

"Did you feel it?" Caster asked in a solemn voice. "Last night. That ritual."

Artoria shook her head. She… hadn't felt anything the night before. Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. "A ritual? Did you do something?" The distant cars meandered soundlessly down their roads, and she watched one silver van specifically.

"Not me. Out there." Artoria could feel her master's eyes on the back of her head, and she glanced back. Caster looked… _shaken_. She held her composure surprisingly well, and her voice was untouched by fear, but there was a tightness in her eyes that Artoria had never seen before. It wasn't anger. It wasn't disappointment. Those, Artoria knew. This…

What could Caster have sensed that had scared her so badly?

"Master?" Artoria found herself asking, despite herself.

"Something new has entered the field. Another piece on the board," her Master said, and her eyes slid away from Artoria, to survey the city. She sounded lost in thought, and a touch of involuntary fear coiled in Artoria's belly. "There are seven participants in the Holy Grail War. We know this."

"We do," Artoria said slowly. "But?"

Caster was silent for a moment. Her hair was almost the way she usually kept it, Artoria noticed, but little tufts of hair stuck out in strange places. Caster had been too stressed to even put herself together. "But now there is an eighth, and this thing breaks every rule that should be inviolable in this war. The Grail can only sustain seven Heroic Spirits. The War _requires_ seven Heroic Spirits."

"So that means we just have one more enemy than we thought, right?" Artoria said, trying to keep her voice light. It sounded forced. "No problem."

"No problem," Caster echoed distantly, and there was an emptiness in her voice. _What could possibly scare her so badly?_ Her Master was frustrating and cruel, but she was powerful. Her Magecraft far surpassed what was possible in this era, and she had implied that she'd lived during the Age of Gods itself. She was _confident_ in her power. But this…. "I have new orders for you, Artoria."

_My name again. She __**must**_ _be distracted. _"Okay."

"Against the other six servants, I want you to perform the same task that you have been charged with for the last month." Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her neck was stiff. "But if this… _thing_ appears here, I do not want you to engage it in combat. You are a tool unsuited to this job, and I would not have you killed in a hopeless, useless battle. Not after having proven yourself so useful."

"A little sentimental for you, don't you think?" Artoria asked before she could stop herself. Caster's eyes snapped back to her, cold disdain written across her face, and Artoria forced herself to hold her ground. _I can't stop being your Servant,_ she thought heatedly, mostly to convince herself, _but I don't have to be your doormat. I'm sick of that role. I was going to be __**king**__._

"Sentiment is a weakness," Caster said, and her own voice sounded no more convinced of this than the voice in Artoria's head had. "You're no good to me dead."

* * *

"It can't be helped," Rin said firmly.

Shirou couldn't believe what he was hearing. "It can't be—"

"Tell me what you want to do about it," she said hotly. "Yeah, someone cast a big spell, and yeah, people died. What does that change for us? We still have five enemies to kill, and _one_ of them is almost certainly responsible. We can't help the dead, Emiya, and we don't have enough information right now to stop it from happening again. All we can do is try to go investigate the site of the ritual, but even that's going to be dangerous. We don't even know what it _did."_

Shirou didn't have a good answer to that. He hadn't felt a thing the night before, and Assassin hadn't seen fit to tell Shirou if _he_ had. Rin said that she'd felt something distantly as it was happening, but that there hadn't been any point in waking Shirou. It had begun and ended too quickly — by the time she understood what she was feeling to any meaningful degree, it was over — and the world had still been here. "This is exactly the kind of thing I joined this war to _stop_, Tohsaka," Shirou said weakly. "And we couldn't even do that."

"And the Grail is still up for grabs," she replied. "Which means that a bigger disaster is still very much in the cards. This, whatever this is, _is_ a setback, but it's not the end of the fight. Time moves forward, Emiya. We can't regret the past." The two Masters sat across from each other at the table in the main room, breakfast that had long since gone cold sitting before them. There hadn't been any sign of Sakura, but Assassin said she was still in bed, so Shirou wasn't particularly worried about her. He didn't know her to be a late sleeper at all, but it had been a stressful few days.

Regret and anger gnawed his insides to pieces, but as much as it killed him at admit it, there _wasn't _anything he could do in retrospect. He heaved a heavy sigh, then scooped something off his plate without looking at it, though his stomach felt like lead. "Alright. So that's what we're doing, right? We're going to go take a look."

Rin shrugged. "I think we should look at options before—"

"_Tohsaka._"

She blinked at him, clearly not expecting that kind of fire, before her look of surprise melted into a tired smile. "Yeah. We can go take a look."

Shirou nodded firmly. "It's the smartest thing to do. It might give us some clues to stopping whatever's next."

"You're learning," Rin said, impressed. "Yeah, I was going to agree with you in the end anyway. Information is what wins or loses the Holy Grail War, after all."

"**Contractor."** Assassin's voice came from just over his left shoulder.

Shirou rubbed at his face, as though his guilt were a layer of dirt that he could just scrub off. "I'm not happy, Assassin. You should have told me."

"**Rin Tohsaka is correct. There is nothing that thou could have done but to die."**

"Fine," he said, sighing. "What is it, though?"

"**Sakura wishes to speak with thee."**

"She—" Shirou blinked. "Is she okay? Why isn't she here herself?"

"**She also wished for me to convey that she did not feel well."**

"You're a message boy, now?" Rin asked, looking confused. She leaned forward on her elbows, tilting her head. "Seems a little beneath you, doesn't it?"

Assassin didn't rise to her bait. Shirou stood, looking down at Rin, and sighed. "Sorry I got mad, Tohsaka. I'm glad we ended up at the same place. I'll go check on Sakura, then we can get moving, alright?"

Rin looked like she wanted to speak, but all she did was nod. Shirou wasn't sure how to take that.

Vaguely worried, but unsure what else to do about it, he filled a glass with water and made his way over to the guest room, where he'd set Sakura up to sleep. He knocked tentatively on the door. "Sakura? Assassin said—"

"Come in," her voice said, and it sounded steady, if quiet. That was probably a good sign.

"Okay, coming in," he said, and forced his worried frown into a gentle smile. The room was dark, and it smelled fairly strongly of the kind of the clinically-fruity disinfectant spray that he kept in the bathroom. He flicked the light switch as he passed, and Sakura blinked up at him from the bed. She was wrapped up tight. The heavy comforter came up past her chin, and she was pale. Still, she smiled nervously at him as he approached, and he returned it with as much confidence as he could muster. "What's up?"

"I don't want to be a bother," she started in a soft voice, and Shirou shook his head.

"Don't be dumb," he said lightly, cutting her off before she could continue to present whatever she wanted to in a way that would put herself down. "You aren't being a bother, and you're not going to be."

Sakura blinked, then gave a hesitant nod. "O-okay, Senpai. I just wanted to tell you that I don't feel well today. I think I'm coming down with something…" She certainly looked weak enough to be sick, but Shirou pressed the back of his hand to her forehead anyway. She flushed at the contact, but she didn't feel like she had a fever; if anything, she was kind of cold and clammy.

Shirou nodded firmly, then withdrew his hand. "Well, I brought you this water," he said, setting the glass down on the nightstand, then took a seat on the edge of the bed. He looked down at her, and she smiled up at him, embarrassed. "Is there anything else you need?"

She shook her head, keeping the blanket firmly up on her chin. "No, but thank you very much. I'm sure I'll feel better soon. I'm just… cold," she said in a way that said that 'cold' was not the extent of whatever it was she was feeling. Something was different, and it took him until now to realize what it was. The sheets had been a neutral white the night before, but now they were grey. She'd changed them in the night.

_The poor thing must have gotten sick and didn't want to make me do the laundry. Or she was just embarrassed,_ he thought, and a pang of sympathy punched him in the stomach. _That would explain the disinfectant smell too. _"Well, that's okay," he said with a smile, "but are you going to be okay if Tohsaka and I leave? We have some business out in the town to take care of, but I can stay if you—-"

She shook her head more vigorously. "No!" she said, then shrank a little from the force of her own voice. "I mean, no, I'll be okay," she said in a weaker voice. "You and Tohsaka-senpai need to keep doing stuff for… all this, right? I can take care of myself." She looked away, gnawing on her lip. "What are you going to go do…?"

Shirou shrugged, putting on a brave, casual face. "Tohsaka and Assassin say that one of the other Masters performed some big ritual last night, and we're going to go check it out. It'll be good to know who did it, and what they were trying to do, right?" _She doesn't need to know about all the people who died. It'll just worry her._

"Tohsaka-senpai says…" Sakura didn't look back at him for a long time, and for a moment he wondered if she was so sick that she'd fallen asleep with her eyes open. She was completely still, and but when he touched her shoulder through the heavy comforter, she turned her face back to him, smiling in that unnervingly lifeless way he'd been seeing a lot more of in the last few days. "Just promise me that you'll be safe, okay?"

_She's sick and stuck here without a Servant while Rin and I are running around getting into trouble, _Shirou thought. _It's no wonder she'd be afraid for me._ He leaned a little closer — not enough to qualify as _looming_, but enough to let her know that he was serious. Her eyes widened a little, and he met them with a steady gaze. "Sakura. I'm going to come back," he said, letting a little steel into his voice. He hoped she knew it wasn't because he was angry — he wasn't angry at all. Just dead serious. "I promise. No matter what happens, I'm going to be here."

The corner of her lip twitched, but not in a smile; it was spasmodically pulling back the way it did when she was thinking very hard about something upsetting.

His fingers were brushing her cheek before he understood what he was doing, and her twitching went utterly still. Even cool as her skin was, it was still soft. It was still smooth. _What am I doing?_ he asked himself, but the only response he had ready for himself was that it felt like the right thing to do. A gentle touch, drawing his thumb down her cheek until it met with the coarse fabric of the blanket. He pulled his hand away, sheepish, and she didn't follow his hand. "I'm always going to come back," he mumbled. "Always."

Her brow furrowed, and she stared intently at him for a moment, before her own cheeks flushed again and she looked away. This time he _could_ tell what that look was. Shame. His heart ached, and he felt a little guilty. _Stop being such an idiot, Shirou,_ he told himself, but he'd never been very good at following that particular direction. All he could do was smile, and hope that she would too.

"If you promise," she whispered, so quiet that he had to lean a little closer to make out the words, "that means you have to. You can't break a promise."

"Let me see your hand," Shirou said, with a confidence that he didn't feel. "I know you're cold. Just your hand."

She was so thrown by this that she just blinked as she looked off at the ceiling, then shifted until the pale, slender fingers of one hand wriggled out of the sheets. Shirou hooked his pinky finger around hers, and she reflexively returned the gesture. "Sakura," he said solemnly. "I swear that I'll always come back."

A small smile spread slowly across her face, and she nodded. "Okay," she said more steadily. "I know you won't break a promise." Her eyes met his again, and this time they were warm. "You're a good person, Senpai."

Shirou rubbed at his hair, as though it were any messier than usually. "I don't know about that. I'm just—"

"You want to help everyone," Sakura said, withdrawing her hand. She looked a little stronger than she had when he'd walked in. "You don't think about if they deserve it or not, or if it's the right thing to do. You just… do it."

Shirou blinked. "Well, yeah. Helping people is always the right thing to do."

Her smile turned sad, but she didn't go empty the way she had before. "I don't know if that's true. But I admire your conviction, Senpai." Her hand slipped back under the sheets, and she closed her eyes. "Go find out what happened," she said, a bittersweet tinge to her voice. "You promised you'd come back, so I'll hold you to that."

After making her promise that she'd take it easy while they were gone and making sure there wasn't anything else she needed, Shirou gently closed the door behind him. The latch clicked softly in the quiet house. He lingered a moment, his hand on the doorknob, then took a deep breath and headed back to where Rin was.

"—think that we need to be very careful," Archer was saying as Shirou approached. "If it was as powerful as you said, then it's going to be extraordinarily dangerous."

"I know," Rin said quietly in return, her voice solemn. "We'll have to take extra precautions."

"From what you felt," Archer said as Shirou re-entered the room, "did you recognize the magical signature? Was it Caster?"

Rin gave Shirou a tight nod of greeting as she spoke. "I don't think so. Caster's magic was more tightly controlled than that. It felt…" She hesitated, giving Shirou an unreadable glance before she continued. "It felt unnatural. Distorted. Barely contained. If I had to guess, I'd say it felt like Matou magic."

Shirou was speaking before he'd even really registered what she was saying. "If you're saying you want to—"

Rin held up a hand to cut him off, but she just looked tired. "I'm not trying to relitigate that, Emiya. I don't think it was Sakura. She's not the only Matou that's involved in this war."

"Then…" Shirou worked to redirect his train of thought. "You think Shinji did it?"

Rin shrugged. "Shinji or Zouken, but I think Zouken is the more likely culprit. If Shinji is a Magus, he's like you. So weak that in all our time going to the same school, I never sensed him."

Shirou decided to let that insult pass, because he wasn't sure Rin had even noticed that she _had_ insulted him. "What would that mean, if it was him?"

Another shrug. "I don't know very much about Zouken Matou. I don't know how old he is, or how powerful he is, or whether or not he has the knowledge or the resources to pull off something like what I sensed last night. It's academic, at this point."

"You think he did it on Shinji's behalf?" Archer asked. He'd yet to acknowledge Shirou's presence in the slightest. _What a dick._ "If Shinji's the Matou master now."

"Hmm," Rin said thoughtfully. She was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest, long red coat hanging around her. "I'd say it's probably the opposite, actually. Shinji's probably participating in the war on Zouken's behalf. Whatever he did, he probably did for his own ends. Speaking of which, Emiya," she droned. "I know you won't spy for me, but has Sakura told you which Servant she had?"

Shirou shook his head. "She doesn't want to be involved, and I don't think she wants us to hurt Shinji. She won't tell us if she thinks we would."

"That's a problem, because we definitely will," Tohsaka muttered. "But we can narrow it down quite a bit. Assassin and Archer are accounted for, obviously. Saber's a weird case, but we know Caster's her Master, and we know Berserker's Master is Illyasviel von Einzbern. That's four out of seven. We don't know who has Caster, Rider, or Lancer, so it could be any one of them."

"I don't think it's Caster," Archer broke in. "She was entrenched at Ryuudou Temple, so she's got access to the leyline and a whole mountain's worth of ambient life to draw on. The Matous wouldn't need to go to a different leyline that might attract more attention if they had control of the Temple."

"Actually," Shirou said, "Remember what Assassin said when he tailed Rider? She was talking to an old man. That's probably Zouken, right? How many old men can be involved in the war?"

"When it comes to Magi, you'd be surprised," Rin said dryly. "But you're right, that's probably the simplest answer. I don't like to make assumptions without better information, but I think we can tentatively consider her Shinji's servant."

"Which means that Zouken knows about Assassin too," Archer said without any particular inflection. "Based on what Shirou said."

"I didn't give that away," Shirou protested. "That was Illya!"

"Still," Rin cut in before they could start bickering in earnest. "The result is that Zouken and Shinji have that information about us." She took a step forward, stretching her arms over her head. "So keep that in mind, alright? We've got our goal: Find out what we can about that spell last night, and we know that it's probably pretty likely that Rider will be lurking around. We still don't know her identity or how she fights, though, so I'd rather avoid a fight if we can. We've got a ways to go, so we should get going. I want to get some spells cast while we walk."

* * *

**Shinji Matou stood in absolute silence.**

Where once there had been an incessant chittering and slithering, enough to drive a more cowardly person mad, now there was nothing. The cold stone floor was a carpet of dried husks, and they had crunched under his feet like dead leaves when he'd entered. With nothing soft or living to break the sound, the echo had seemed to go on forever.

Every last Crest Worm was dead.

This was the moment his grandfather's death became real. He didn't know exactly how, but his grandfather's longevity and the worms were connected, somehow. If they were all dead, then…

Then he was really gone.

Part of him mourned. That was sickening. He hadn't expected that reaction.

The rest of him wanted to piss on the old bastard's grave, such as it was.

On the long run home, he'd had more than enough time to collect his thoughts, to regain his composure. Rider was still alive. The fact that the book still existed was proof of that.

Zouken had promised him that victory was assured. Zouken, the arrogant old fuck, hadn't been able to even _consider_ the idea that his plan might backfire. Rider, too, but it seemed like she'd had the sense to turn her coat rather than die for him. Shinji, though? Shinji had known right from the start that the plan was doomed to fail. But had they listened? Of course not.

(The fact that he had been too afraid to speak up was immaterial. Zouken was dead, and he was not. That was all the validation he needed.)

Now he was alone. His allies were gone or dead. He'd briefly considered using a Command Seal — the only one he had to spare — to command Rider to come back to him, to serve him, but he wasn't an idiot. Command Seals couldn't guarantee absolute obedience. That was far too broad an order to be effective.

What was left to him?

The Holy Grail was his by birthright.

Zouken hadn't believed in him. Rider hadn't believed in him. Sakura—

Sakura.

His fingers curled into fists, his joints creaking with the hatred pulsing through the gesture. Sakura.

Through Sakura, Rider.

Through Sakura, the Holy Grail.

It had been a while since he'd been bold enough to leave a mark, but the days of dancing around that self-righteous asshole were dead. It wouldn't take much to break the whore. She'd dance on his strings the way she always had. She belonged to him, after all. She could no more resist him than…

Well.

Than she could drag herself from the filth.

He knew where she'd be. He knew what she'd be doing.

On her back, legs spread already, no doubt. If she hadn't already been fucking him, she would be now. The thought was enough to boil his blood all on its own. As though she were a person. As though she got to _choose_.

He was no true Magus. Not yet. But if there was one avenue of power that he had dominion over, if there was anything he could do better than anyone he knew…

Alchemy.

There was no reason for that…. _thing_ at the theater to come back here. No reason for Rider to come looking. It's not like killing him would free her, after all, and she knew that he wasn't the one supplying the magic. He would have the time he needed to prepare.

The dead slugs crunched again as he knelt down, thrusting his hand into the once-writhing mass of corpses. His fingers closed around one of them. The sharp edges of the dessicated thing bit into his skin, but he smiled as he pulled it free. Though it looked like a stiff wind would blow it into dust, it held firm.

Shinji smiled.

"Enjoy him while it lasts, baby sister." Crest Worm in hand, he ascended the stairs, moving for his makeshift laboratory. "I know what you are."

* * *

_Next chapter: Autopsy_


	25. Autopsy

_Note: In honor of this chapter, my partner and I made mapo tofu last week. It was really good. Kirei bad, but he's right on this one._

* * *

The plate of food the weird little man slid before Abaddon radiated such an aura of white hot spiciness that space itself seemed to bend around it. Lancer's nose burned just from sheer proximity, something that he had never really considered was possible. What sat before his Master was not anything so peaceful as food — it was a weapon. It was clearly something that the owner of the restaurant had deployed in order to kill the guy who looked like that bastard priest. What sort of person would eat such a thing? What sort of person would willingly subject themselves to such horrors, even if it were the last available food on the whole planet?

Abaddon dipped his spoon into the mapo tofu and ate a big bite without any hesitation.

Lancer and Medb watched with bated breath.

Abaddon closed those unnerving blue eyes, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. Silence descended upon the table. Nobody moved.

The restaurant itself was almost empty — the place was a dingy hole in the wall, barely on the right side of clean. There had been a sign out front, proclaiming the place's name, and the fastenings on one of the characters had come partially undone, letting it dangle limply. Lancer hadn't bothered to remember what it was called. It was badly lit, without a single window to remind a person that the outside world existed, and the flickering lights made a poor substitute for the sun. The chairs were old, and the tables were older; the booth they were sitting in looked like it hadn't been maintained much more recently than the theater had. Lancer _had_ eaten in less appealing places, but those had mostly been literal dungeons that he'd been unceremoniously tossed into. He couldn't fathom what would draw a person to such a place, but Abaddon had insisted that this establishment had meant a great deal to Kirei, and so, wanted it to be the first human food he would ever be allowed to eat.

It was much too early to be serving mapo tofu, even in a place as fundamentally wrong as this, but the owner had made a big show of how "Father Kirei-sama," his most loyal customer, was always welcome, no matter the time of day, and had led them to the cleanest booth in the place. (That was a little like picking out the cleanest stall in a full stable to Lancer, but he tried to appreciate the effort.) He hadn't even taken Abaddon's order, but he _had_ asked whether his "distinguished guests" would like anything as well. Medb had demanded only a bottle of sake all to herself, and Lancer had ended up with the saddest, limpest, greasiest plate of dumplings he had ever had the misfortune of imagining.

He had killed people for lesser insults than that dish. Medb had seemed discontent with her alcohol, but she was still putting on a show to impress upon Abaddon how innocent and lovable she was, so she wasn't currently trying to burn the place to the ground or crucify the owner with his own ribs. Lancer wondered how long the honeymoon period would last before she got impatient. It didn't usually take very long, and he was pretty curious to see how that particular trainwreck would go down. He hoped it would end with Medb dead, but he was having trouble getting enough of a read on Abaddon to calculate the odds of that happening.

A bead of sweat formed on Abaddon's forehead, and he sighed cryptically. "So this is what I have been missing," he murmured reverently. "Mortal ingenuity truly is incredible." He took another bite, the hateful sauce dripping off of his spoon.

Lancer leaned back into the booth's awful cushion, frowning. "Well, if you think that's good, wait until you try something that's actually, you know, food."

Medb shot Lancer a narrow-eyed look of scorn that he was pretty sure Abaddon wouldn't see, and she rested her luxurious head on his massive bicep. "I'm so glad you like it," she said sweetly. This was absolutely ridiculous. She looked like a child next to him. Lancer actually felt embarrassed _for_ her.

Lancer's master opened his eyes, and smiled down at the top of Medb's head. "Do you want some?" he asked warmly.

The spasmodic look of horror that passed over Medb's face was fleeting, surprising, and oh-so-satisfying. "Oh, thank you," she said smoothly, "but I just couldn't, Abaddon, darling. This is your experience, after all. I wouldn't want to take that from you." She took a swig of sake to recompose herself, like it was ale.

Abaddon actually looked deeply disappointed, as though he were offering her manna from heaven itself and not just… raw pain concentrated and condensed into some tofu and some pork and some bean sauce from hell. "I see," he said, and took another bite. Sweat ran down his face, and his cheeks had taken on a slight red tinge. "It really is delicious."

"Is it really a new experience if you're still Kirei?" Lancer asked idly. He poked at one of the dumplings, and the tip of his finger came away glistening with thick grease. More like slime, honestly. "I mean, Kirei ate here all the time, from how that weird little dude was acting."

Setting his spoon onto the rim of the plate, Abaddon undid the top button of his shirt. Heat was radiating off of the man.

The trio had stopped on the way to get him some clothes that weren't all torn up and burned and bloody, so he was wearing jeans and a black-and-white button up shirt, with bandages wrapped around his inhuman arm. It was a very disconcerting look. Medb had paid for it with some money she claimed was burning a hole in her pocket, but Lancer suspected that when she'd disappeared for a few minutes immediately after leaving the theater, she had gone back to rifle through Zouken's smoldering robes for spending cash. They'd picked up some casual clothes for Lancer and Medb, too; he was wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt that he had to say was rather dashing, and Medb had taken a liking to a pink t-shirt with the words YOUR BOYFRIEND WANTS THIS emblazoned across her chest in English. She was also wearing booty shorts that had the kanji for Queen plastered on her ass.

Looking at her made Lancer want to shake his head. Some people just had no sense of fashion.

"In a sense, you are correct," Abaddon said slowly, considering his words carefully. "I have memories of eating many things. But memory is not the same as experience. What Kirei remembers — or what Azrael remembers, for that matter — is faded. The memories are mine, and yet, someone else's. The ones I make now, as me, are more vibrant." He picked up his spoon again and started eating. He wasn't exactly rushing, but the tofu was disappearing remarkably quickly, considering what it was made of.

"Right," Lancer said. "I think that makes sense. I've only ever been me, but I guess I wouldn't see some other guys' memories the same as mine."

"It sounds like a terrible burden," Medb sighed dramatically. Lancer gave her a flat look, and she smiled innocently back at him.

"I'm still working that part out," Abaddon said softly.

After that, he ate in silence until the bowl was empty, so Lancer took the time to think. To consider.

What were they doing here?

Eating breakfast, sort of. But that wasn't really the question he was asking himself. What was the point of all this? Why was he humoring this… abomination? There was no better word for whatever this amalgam was than that. Lancer wasn't intimately familiar with the rules of magic, and his understanding of the systems involved in the Grail War itself was fairly limited, but every fiber of his being whispered that the existence that sat before him was a violation of everything that should be. And he _liked_ him. Despite everything, he liked Abaddon.

Why did Abaddon have power over him?

He didn't know, and he didn't like it. If it wasn't a command seal, though, then it might not be a limited quantity thing — as big a show as Abaddon had made of treating him as an equal, you could _never_ be equals so long as one guy held that much power over the other. Which brought him to his final, most important question.

Did he like Abaddon because he was better than Kirei? Or did he like Abaddon because he was being compelled to in some way?

He didn't know that either. He wanted to say that he didn't _feel_ compelled, that Abaddon just had a kind of helpless innocence and magnetic personality that drew people to him, but… did that mean that was all it was? Or was it something more insidious? He forced himself to confront that possibility. _Right now, what does that mean?_ Not a whole lot, at the moment. There wasn't anything he could do about it if Abaddon didn't let him. Anger prickled in his chest, but he reminded himself that he was getting ahead of himself. He was getting in his own head. There was no reason to think that any such thing was happening.

"So, bossman," Lancer said as Abaddon took his final bite, "there's something we've been avoiding."

The Pseudoservant sighed, gently pressing his napkin to his lips. "The Holy Grail." His voice was heavy.

"Specifically, the war part," Lancer replied. "Kirei was a Master, even though he lost his spells along with…" He glanced down at the one chitinous arm meaningfully. "His hand. What actually happened to his hand?"

Medb shrugged. "I didn't do anything with it. The old man said get the priest, not the arm. Should still be at the church."

_Nothing but cut it off._ "Anyway, you should still be a Master, just like I'm still a Servant. I don't think the Holy Grail War is the kind of thing you get to opt out of. Not to mention the fact that Rider's Master is still out there somewhere."

"He's not a problem," Medb said sweetly. "He's very obedient."

"I have spent an eternity killing," Abaddon said. "I do not wish to return to that kind of lifestyle so soon. I have no wish to grant, no more than Kirei did. Do you know the true nature of the Grail, Cu Chulainn?" His piercing eyes shifted to the woman at his side. "Do you, Medb?"

"True nature?" Lancer asked.

"It's an omnipotent wish granter," Medb said offhandedly. "What else is there to care about?"

Abaddon smiled sadly. "Does the name Angra Mainyu mean anything to either of you?"

Lancer shook his head. Medb didn't react.

"Long ago." Absently, he picked the spoon back up, and drew small circles in the remaining sauce. "All the evil in the world, condensed into a single person. There was a time when that was possible. The world was small, once. Infinity was not so infinite." He looked troubled. No, not just troubled — lost. "The being known as Angra Mainyu dwells within the Greater Grail. Hateful. Cruel. Murderous, on a scale that I alone in this room can comprehend. He is… a kindred spirit, in a sense, waiting to be born. Releasing him would doom this world."

"How do you know all that?" Lancer asked suspiciously. "I haven't heard any of this."

"I have," Medb said. Lancer gave her a questioning look, and she blinked back at him. "What? That shitty old dude was obsessed with him. I don't know why, but he mentioned him by name a few times. I didn't really listen though, because I didn't care about his wish."

"I am grateful to exist," Abbadon murmured, as though Lancer and Medb had not spoken. "but I do not like the position that I find myself in. Azrael has no wish. Kirei has no wish but to understand himself through mass destruction. What good would come of fighting the Holy Grail War, when to participate would be to unleash such a thing?"

Lancer didn't exactly know what to say to that; all this felt pretty over his head, and he felt that suspicious pull to just nod and agree with whatever his Master said that might just be in his own head. "But not wanting to doesn't change anything," he said, mainly to be contrary to that feeling. "You're still involved."

"It's a question for another time," Abaddon said firmly. "I haven't decided what I _want_. I am not… used to such things."

Irritation flared in Lancer's chest. "You're just going to put this off?" He accused. "So you don't want anything. What if someone else gets it?" He pointed at Medb, who blinked at him. "What if someone like _her_ gets it?"

"You don't care about what happens to this world any more than I do," Medb said lazily. "You just want to use your lance in a world without consequences."

He could feel his face twisting. The truth was, she was right, though he objected to the phrasing on principle. He had no wish for the Grail himself; he had no grander purpose than to enjoy the thrill of the fight. That was what he wanted. For Abaddon to just abandon it-

"I know that I cannot simply bury my head in the sand," Lancer's Master said into the tense silence. "I have existed for barely more than half a day, and already, I value my own existence too much to accept the consequences of that. However I also have some… insight into who I am. The minds I am made up of. The part of me that is Kirei is desperate for it, and I do not trust myself with such temptation. That is why I cannot rush into a decision. I must truly consider what the right thing to do is."

Looking vaguely unimpressed, Medb finished her bottle of sake; Lancer had not yet mustered up the courage to touch his own food. Medb reached across the table, grabbed one of the slippery little bastards, and popped it into her mouth. The color instantly drained from her face, and she spat it back out onto the floor. It hit with a sad, wet slap and stuck.

Lancer looked down at it incredulously.

* * *

"You feel that, right?" Archer asked, staring up at the creepiest abandoned building that Rin had ever seen in her entire life. His hands flexed, as though longing for the comfort of his weapons.

It wasn't outwardly any more unsettling than any of the hundred run down, dilapidated buildings that she'd ever been around. It just looked kind of sad, and old, and badly maintained, with gaping holes where window glass once was, and peeling paint, and green growing where it shouldn't. No, what so unsettled Rin was the oppressive aura of death and disease that weighed down every inch of her physical form. Not disease, so much as… rot. There was no smell, but she wanted to cover her nose anyway.

She nodded, and she could feel her face going pale. "This is definitely the place. It all leads here."

"I couldn't feel Caster's magic," Shirou said slowly, and he looked as grey as he had when Assassin had been draining him dry, "but I can feel this." He shivered. "Assassin?"

"**Great blasphemies were performed here,"** Assassin rumbled at their side. "**Many souls were lost." **He sounded almost _angry_. "**What has been done here cannot be forgiven."**

"Do we have to go in?" Shirou asked in the voice of someone who already knew the answer to their question, but who didn't want to admit that it was true. "Can't we learn anything from out here?"

Rin shook her head, but her stomach felt too tight to jab Shirou for the stupid question. "You can stay out here, if you want, but the rest of us are going in."

"You'll just get in the way," Archer said bluntly. "Stay out here and keep an eye out."

Shirou grit his teeth; Archer dismissing him seemed to be exactly what he needed to give himself courage, this time. "I'm coming in," he growled.

Archer snorted.

Inside the building, the mana in the air was so condensed and disturbed that tapping into it felt a little like trying to breathe liquid lead. Dust choked the air, and she had to hold the top of her red sweater over her mouth just to keep her lungs from filling with it. Rust and mold and rot was everywhere. In one corner of the lobby, a dessicated rat lay twisted in agonized death; the breeze of their passing collapsed it into nothing. Shirou's eyes were wide, his own shirt over his mouth, while Archer took everything in with cold eyes.

"**This way,"** Assassin said from the direction of a hallway, and the three of them followed. He was right; every step down that path was harder and harder, until they stood before a set of doorways that led to the theater proper; the doors themselves were nowhere to be seen, and the hallways just outside were scorched and burned, as though everything had been bathed in flame. Everything, strangely, but for a single patch in the vague shape of a splayed human body.

"Some poor bastard got hit hard by whatever happened," Archer said dryly. "Wonder if he got hit by the door before he vaporized."

Rin punched him in the arm. "Someone probably died there, dumbass. Have a little respect."

Archer rolled his eyes and strolled into the theater. "Stick around long enough, and you'll figure out the dead don't deserve any special respect. They're just dead." Rin followed him in, and she clutched at her stomach, suddenly feeling as though she were about to vomit. Behind her, Shirou gasped, horrified, and for once, she couldn't exactly blame him.

The room was in shambles. All around the central raised stage, the floor had been scoured clean. Burn marks streaked the floor, and rubble was piled high along every wall, where the seating had apparently been pushed by some blast of force. She didn't have a great angle on the stage itself from the doorway, but there were unmistakably headless bodies that had been left to rot in various states of sitting up. And none of that could even touch the sickening, churning, boiling mana in the room. Only dark magic felt like this. Real curses and human sacrifices. Rin had never sensed anything that shook her so deeply to her very core.

"Okay," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "Let's try not to be here any longer than we have to." She took a shuddering breath; at least this room wasn't so choked with dust. "Archer, Assassin, keep eyes out for anyone showing up to crash the party." Archer turned right around and walked out, and he seemed to be trying to hide the gratitude on his face as he did so. "Shirou, come with me. Help me look around. Two pairs of eyes are better than one."

She glanced back at him, and he looked as sick as she felt. His mouth was slightly slack, his skin grey, with the look of someone trying not to vomit. "What are we looking for?" he asked, his voice shaky.

"I don't know," Rin said. "Anything strange. Out of the ordinary. Anything that doesn't belong." She forced her shaking legs forward, one foot in front of the other, until she stood beside the stage. She hauled herself up onto it, feeling like her body was weighted.

What she saw surpassed every single one of her worst expectations. Preparing for the Holy Grail War, she'd spent long, sleepless nights making lists of all the worst things that could happen, and how she could prepare to take steps toward dealing with them when they did. How to counter powerful spells. How to deal with people she cared about being used against her. The possibility that she would have to kill her own sister to win. She'd been exhaustive. She'd been as cynical as she could think to be. But this? The spellwork she saw engraved onto the stage? Something like this had never entered into her wildest speculations. This…

This was the nightmare scenario.

The summoning circle drew her eye in a way that wasn't magical at all, and her heart was in her throat as she approached it. Dried blood had been the medium, she thought as she knelt beside it, trying desperately to remain analytical. Every beat of her heart choked her. Her fingers brushed the outermost line, and she licked her dry lips nervously. There was no doubt that this _was_ a summoning circle. Parts of it were almost identical to the one she herself had drawn to summon Archer, while others…

An intricately drawn ring encircled the spell, and she thought it was a binding spell. That shouldn't be possible, if you wanted to summon something so powerful as a Servant; if any mage could replicate Command Seals with a few extra lines, the school of Familiarity would be a very different beast. _But…_ She ran her fingers inward. "Flesh?" she murmured. "Make flesh?" She only understood some of these runes. "Maybe _give _flesh?" Another peculiarity. You didn't have to specify anything about a Servant's flesh to summon them; that part was implied. So some manipulation of flesh was involved, then. _Binding Servants and flesh_, she thought with dawning horror, but she did not allow herself to pursue that line of thought. Not yet.

A mirrored pair of sigils flanked the innermost circle, and Rin frowned. _These look like Einzbern designs. But even Illyasviel wouldn't… Would she?_ She stared at them, trying to understand what exactly she was looking at. _It's a little like the bits you add to make a Servant a Berserker, so… class modification? Modulation? Is that even possible? _She wasn't sure.

One rune she did recognize. "Ruler," she whispered thoughtfully, trying to recall what she knew about the rumored Ruler class. It was supposed to be something that the Grail kept in reserve, to be summoned when it felt the War required a more neutral arbitrator. Right? She didn't know much more than that. As far as she knew, it had never actually been summoned before.

_The Ruler sign is part of the sigil, though,_ she thought. _So did they summon someone as a Ruler who shouldn't be eligible for that class? Or was this more like… tricking the Grail into summoning something else through into that slot?_ If they were right about this spell being Zouken's doing, then she suspected the latter. Ice water ran through her veins in place of blood.

There were other pieces she didn't recognize, and these, she could barely hazard guesses for. Something about the spirit. Something about a chain? A definition of ownership?

_There's an eighth Servant,_ she thought, and she could hardly wrap her mind around it. _Rulers are supposed to be neutral parties, but if Zouken wanted them, he'll have found a way to make them not be bound to that requirement._

Combine all that with manipulating flesh, and the bindings…

Had the crazy motherfucker summoned a Servant _into_ himself? That was impossible. That had never been done before. But…

But she couldn't ignore these modifications. She couldn't say for sure that he hadn't, not when so much of this was over _her_ head, despite all her studying and knowledge.

"Tohsaka," Shirou called, and her head shot up like a deer hearing the crack of a hunter's rifle. He was standing on ground level, examining something she couldn't see in his hands. Trying to get her breathing under control, she scooted over to the edge.

"Let me see," she said.

He held out something that looked like a petrified slug, intricately carved in stone, with a mouth bristling with sharp, pointed teeth. It was cold to the touch, but it did have a faint aura of power. "What do you think this is?" he asked, and to his credit, his voice sounded more steady than hers probably did.

He was uncomfortable, but he didn't know enough to know how afraid he should be.

Rin blew out a quiet breath. "It looks like some kind of talisman. I think this is a protection charm, so…" She worked through that one in her head. "A lot of people died to power this spell, right? So maybe Zouken enchanted this to mark himself as off limits to the siphon."

Shirou nodded slowly. "That makes sense."

She was shaken enough by all of this that she gave him a small smile. "Good work, Emiya. Keep that, for now. We can look at it closer later."

He blinked at her, then smiled back. "Thanks," he said simply. His straightforwardness was a little cloying, but… it helped steady her. The bastard.

"Keep looking, though," she said quickly, turning back to search the rest of the stage. "We don't know what else might be around." Now that she could tear her eyes away from the circle itself, there was another oddity; a black robe, slightly singed, surrounded and half-filled by the dessicated corpses of more slugs, not unlike the carving Shirou had found. She had no idea what to make of that. Zouken was known to be a bug-user, but she had no concept of what that really meant in practice. Bugs in his pocket? Maybe. Bugs in his brain? Definitely. She just didn't have enough context to understand what she was looking at.

Upon closer examination, there was another of the charms in the pile of dead worms, this one on a leather cord, presumably to be worn around the neck. _This was probably Zouken's, then_, she thought. _So… the other one was someone else. That's probably Shinji._

Sensing a presence at her side, she turned to look. Shirou was standing there, solemn. Standing so steady, in fact, that she realized that she was shaking. _Ridiculous_, she thought petulantly. _I can't let him look stronger than me. _

She inhaled slowly, and exhaled it even slower. Then she did that again and again, until she had once again found her composure. She almost felt grateful, though she wasn't about to say that to the dolt out loud.

"Are you okay, Tohsaka?" Shirou asked quietly. It looked like he'd jammed the talisman into one of his pants pockets, and the tonal incongruity of that was enough to make her smile a little, despite herself.

"Yeah," she said, forcing her voice to be level. "I know you can feel it, but—"

He shook his head. "You're more in tune with these kinds of things than I am," he said earnestly. "I can feel that it's really bad, but I can't imagine how it must feel for you." He glanced over at her, and concern was written across his face. "Do you need to take a break?"

She shook her head. "If I leave, I won't come back. We need to find everything we can, first." She blinked, noticing for the first time that he was holding something else. "What's that?"

He held up something that looked to be an ancient horseshoe, beaten and worn down by the steady march of time. It was dirty and crusty, with a word she couldn't read carved into it. "Horseshoe? It was over there, by the circle."

Rin frowned. "I don't know what purpose a horseshoe would serve in a summoning ritual other than a catalyst. It must have some connection to whoever Zouken summoned."

Shirou blinked. "Zouken was—"

She shook her head, and the motion made her queasy. "We'll compare notes after. Let's get this over with."

They stayed for about ten minutes; that was all Rin could take, but by then, she thought they'd gotten everything they were going to get. Aside from memorizing as much of the circle as she could, Shirou also discovered an inert familiar, too damaged to identify; it looked like someone had been spying, but that didn't tell her anything of value. They should just get out of here.

Rin stood at the theater's exit, the horrific scene behind her. She could feel Shirou's eyes on her back, but there was one thing she just couldn't leave without doing. "What happened here is monstrous," she said quietly. "I'm burning this place to the fucking ground."

Shirou was silent, and for a moment she thought he was going to protest. "Can you keep it from spreading?" he finally asked. His voice was heavy.

She nodded.

"Then burn it down," he said, and walked out, leaving her alone in the oppressive theater.

She turned slowly, etching every last detail into her mind as permanently as she could. _This is what happens when you don't care about anything but results,_ she thought distantly. _This… evil. How many people aren't going home? How many loved ones won't ever see the people they care about again?_ Rage chewed her insides to pieces, and she latched onto that feeling, stoking the flames within until they threatened to burst forth and consume her.

She raised one hand, the righteous flame coursing through her, dancing invisibly between her fingertips like tiny arcs of static electricity. Her eyes fastened on the stage, the gun in which the killing spells had been loaded like bullets. Her vision wavered, sharp edges blurring and dancing like the distorted haze of heat over a bonfire.

"Burn," she whispered, and snapped her fingers.

* * *

They stood before the towering inferno, heat baking their fronts. It had spread quickly, but Rin had a hand out, invisible barriers keeping the buildings all around the conflagration from catching. It had spread supernaturally quickly, and it would end rapidly; the building would be a heap of blasted, broken wood and metal and melted glass before the first responders even arrived. Such a place needed to be destroyed. That was a stain that would never have been removed; left to fester, it would have become the kind of curse that caused real damage to people who stayed exposed to it for too long. Rin thought of it as cauterization, because that's all it was. The city might be able to heal if the infection was burned out.

They stood in silence, watching the fingers of flame lick the sky, as if ever grasping for something just out of reach.

Rin felt hollow.

"**The authorities will soon arrive," **Assassin said. "**We should not be here when they do."**

"I agree," Archer said idly. "Your barriers will hold long enough for this to fizzle out."

A strange part of Rin wanted to stay and watch. To verify that the beast was well and truly dead, though there was no beast to kill. To see the wound purified, then. Reluctantly, though, she nodded, tying off her spellwork and lowering her hand. "Alright. We can talk while we walk. I think I have a trail to follow."

"You do?" Shirou asked. "What kind of trail?"

The dumbass was probably picturing her sniffing around like a bloodhound or something. "That kind of magical disruption always leaves a residue, and I'm attuned to it now." She pointed in an otherwise arbitrary direction. "They went that way. Let's see what we can find."

As they walked the winding, meandering path, Rin filled the others in on the evidence they'd found, and the dots she'd managed to connect. It didn't take as long to go through it as as she'd expected; most of what they'd gathered all led to the same inevitable conclusion. "To summarize, basically, I think this… this _stupid_ _motherfucker_, had the bright idea to summon an eighth Servant into himself. Zouken might be running around as a Pseudoservant right now. I don't know who he's fused himself with, but it had to be someone powerful for the residue to be that strong."

"And that's bad," Shirou said helpfully.

Rin rolled her eyes. "Yes, Shirou, that's bad."

"**Allow me to see this catalyst," **Assassin said, materializing right there in the street. The area had been decimated, so it wasn't exactly bustling, but it was also far from the kind of subtle behavior she'd expect from an Assassin. She held out the horseshoe, and he took it gingerly. He even _clanked_ as he walked. That was ridiculous. He held it up to his eyelights, turning the rough metal this way and that. "**The word engraved upon it. Do thou recognize it?"**

Rin and Shirou both shook their heads.

"**It is written in the tongue of the old Hebrews, ancient even when I donned the mask."** He paused, as if thinking, but Rin didn't know how much brain was behind that skull. He barely seemed like a person most of the time. "**Gehenna."** He tilted his head curiously, the blue flames narrowing into something approximating slits. There was hardly a face to read, but Rin could feel the recognition pouring off of the skull.

"Is that a person?" Shirou asked. "Gehenna? I don't think I've heard of him before."

"**Not a person. A place."** There was a note of something Rin couldn't identify in the armored giant's voice. "**They called it the burning place. A valley in old Israel. A place of flame and death, where the souls of the wicked were gathered."**

"Wait a minute," Rin said, shaking her head, trying to process the strange words that he was saying to her. "Hell? Are you talking about Hell?"

"**A more complicated answer than thou might expect, Rin Tohsaka." **He held the horseshoe back out to her, and as she took it, he faded away. Beside her, Shirou seemed to relax, as the burden of supporting him lightened. "**Many of Allah's most trusted messengers and servants were tempered in those flames of perdition. Thou say that thou believe him to have fused with a Divine Spirit. I believe the name carved into this catalyst bears this out."**

Shirou looked confused. "Are you saying… Sakura's grandfather summoned an _angel?"_

_Not only a Divine Spirit. An Angel. _Rin knew very little about those beings. Their existence was hotly debated, even among the highest echelons of magecraft. One thing was for sure, though — if angels did exist, they were not the white-robed, haloed cherubs most people thought of when they heard the words. "Is that even possible?" she whispered. Dark fear coiled its way through Rin's belly once again, and what Archer said next was gasoline on the fire.

"I think we should tell them," Archer, who had been so quiet up until now, said suddenly. "They're running blind. They need to know."

Rin didn't know what was happening here, but her Servant was clearly more clued in than his smug aura seemed to allow. If she hadn't already been afraid, she would have been now.

"**Thou art correct, Archer. There can be no doubt that this is related," **Assassin said heavily. "**Contractor. Rin Tohsaka. There is a matter of grave importance we must discuss."**

* * *

_Note: Thank y'all so much for everything. I've been really struggling with writing for months, but in the last couple weeks, I think it's starting to come back. I've been having some really cool ideas that I'm very excited to get to write about._

_Next chapter: Penumbra_


	26. Penumbra

_Note: This is a Sakura chapter, so the obligatory content warning for some real intense self loathing and suicidal thoughts. If that sounds tough to handle right now, that's okay._

* * *

In the shower, Sakura couldn't see the huge, ugly scab on her neck, but it stung every time she turned her head or let the scalding water hit it too directly, so she couldn't exactly forget about it either. The water ran down her back, unpleasantly hot, while she stared vacantly at the wall and tried to come to grips with her present situation.

She felt empty. Void. A hollow shell wrapped around a black hole core that would devour everything if the containment was breached. _That was your chance,_ she thought dully, but there was no emotional weight to it. They were just words. _That was your way out. _It wouldn't have been her fault. It would have been Assassin's. Assassin probably would have told Senpai that it was her choice, but Senpai would have known that Assassin was really the one to blame.

_She strains against that stubborn will to live, forcing stiff muscles into motion. Just a little, and her sinful blood would spill onto the bed and her filthy, depressing life would come to an end. Assassin stares down at her dispassionately, and she doesn't know what he wants. __**If **__he wants._

_Is he trying to help her? Is that what he thinks this is?_

_**sakura?**_

_Does he think that by offering her the choice, that she will be freed? If only it were that simple. If only the idea of wanting to die were a monster you could slay and be done with, if only you had the right sword in hand._

_**are you okay?**_

_but she stares up at her death, and her death stares down at her. it will not give her what she wants. She must take it._

_She wants it so badly._

_**you're my friend. i'll always worry about you.**_

_Why can't she do it? Why? Why? Why, why, why, why, why why why why whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywh_

_**i wont let**_

_whywhywhyWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY_

_**i wont let it change you**_

She'd known that. And yet… all she could think about in that moment had been what the look on Senpai's face would be when he heard. When he found her. She was probably just projecting. It would probably be relief that he'd feel, the burden of having to take care of her being lifted from his poor shoulders.

But. But if she was wrong.

She'd be even more monstrous than she already was. The water scalded her, and her long hair clung to her body, and she could feel her fingers getting pruny, but she didn't move. A little more discomfort wouldn't make up for the thought, but she would try anyway.

Too cowardly to die. Too cowardly to leave. Just cowardly enough to let herself be pulled along in his wake, to drag every problem and issue she had to him to deal with. But she couldn't leave. If he told her to, she could, but… she didn't think he would. So she was trapped. Trapped in a wonderful place that she didn't deserve. A Hell of her own making, where the flames that burned her were made of guilt and the chains that bound her were fear.

_He wants me to live._

Why?

What was she so attached to in this life that she couldn't just let herself fall?

Was it him?

_He wouldn't want me to stay alive for him,_ she thought morosely. _He'd want me to stay alive for me._

**But we can't do that,** the part of her that knew how to survive said. **We know we don't get to think like that. It only makes the rest hurt worse. **

_I know,_ Feeling Sakura whispered. _But if it's what he would want-_

**We're going to tear ourself apart,** Surviving Sakura said bluntly. **He's a crutch. Use him. He cares about us, even though he shouldn't. Is that any different than how we usually use him?**

_Shut up, shut up, shut up SHUT UP-_

Sakura blinked.

The air was thick with steam, making breathing a little harder than it should have been. _How long have I been standing here? _She forced her mind to quiet itself once again, and turned the water off. She stood there, alone, in the cool air, feeling the goosebumps rise on her skin. The steady dripping of the faucet was the only sound in the bathroom.

She found herself in front of the mirror, naked, dripping wet, though she didn't remember walking over. That wasn't particularly abnormal when she got like this. Purple hair draped around her like a possessive mantle. An angry red and brown gash, still healing, on the side of her neck, like a scarlet letter marking her as tainted. "Disgusting," she whispered. The word meant nothing to her own ears. She couldn't feel its sting. She couldn't feel the rage behind it. She felt nothing. Nothing. Nothing. A filthy body. Her skin crawled just looking at it; it couldn't have been any more plain if the record of her sins had been carved into every inch of her flesh. This was the person Senpai liked so much.

What a fool he was.

Slowly, she dressed. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of herself in the corner of her eye, and the hatred would so overwhelm her that she would freeze. This kind of self loathing came and went. Maybe it was just the stress of everything that had happened. Maybe it was how close she had come to her own death the night before. 'Why' didn't really matter. All that mattered was that she was _here_, and she was so tired...

She closed her eyes and slid to the ground bonelessly. Even dressing herself was such a painful, painful effort. What was the point? What was the point of any of this?

She remembered the feeling of Senpai's arms around her, holding her tight once more. She forced herself to live in that moment, to remember every detail she could. The warmth of his skin. The roughness of his shirt on her own skin. The sound of his voice.

_You don't deserve that._

No, of course she didn't.

But she craved it. It was a hunger that could never be sated. The desire to be touched, to be acknowledged, to be _loved_. It was disgusting. It was contemptible. She shivered in the cold, wrapping her own arms around herself, but it was a poor substitute for him.

Nothing would ever be more than that.

* * *

The morning air was brisk, but not unpleasant. Ms. Fujimura had a small stash of clothing at Shirou's house for emergencies (mostly spilled-food based incidents), and she'd borrowed a gray sweatshirt, slipping it over the outfit she'd borrowed from Rin. Around her neck, she had wrapped one of Shirou's scarves. It was simple and black, and it smelled faintly of him. It helped.

Leaving the house wasn't a smart idea, but she was fairly desperate for a small change of scenery, so she'd resolved to walk around the neighborhood a little. She'd keep her eyes and ears wide open, of course, but she needed the fresh air.

She stood at the gate, a light breeze swirling her hair in a slightly-annoying dance around her, her hands in her pockets to keep them warm. She breathed in, breathed out, and started walking the familiar streets.

Her head had started to clear from the very first breath of winter air, and the weight had lifted, if only a little. She was grateful for that. The episode in the bathroom was surreal, like a bad dream fading in the early morning sun. The sky was cloudy and grey overhead, but she didn't mind; there was a kind of beauty in that kind of colorless world. She didn't pass anyone familiar as she walked, which was a relief. The year and a half since she'd made this place a kind of second home had been the best in her life, in many ways, and she tried to keep focusing on that. Nothing else. She remembered the good times, founded on a lie as they were.

Her path meandered this way and that, with no real regard for direction or destination. She knew this place well enough not to get lost, so long as she didn't wander _too _far away. It was just a brief sojourn, but she tried to take every ounce of satisfaction she could in it. She was useless to Senpai and Rin, but she could pretend she was busy at a time like this.

She was heading back when she noticed something strange. As light snowflakes drifted through the air around her, in a small cluster of trees between several houses, a purple shape on the ground caught her eye. Frowning, she drew closer, until—

She was about a dozen feet away when she realized with horror that she was looking at a _body._ No, no, she thought with relief a moment later, not a body — the little girl _was_ breathing. _She probably just got tired playing and fell asleep,_ Sakura thought with a small smile. _It's starting to snow, though, so I should go make sure she's okay._

She took another step forward, then froze. She could feel… something. A slight buzz on the back of her neck. Magic.

_Is she a magus? _

Something clicked into place, and she noticed for the first time that the little girl's hair was as white as the snow falling all around them. And a purple coat…

This was the girl, wasn't it? The one who had tried to kill Senpai? The one with the monstrous Berserker?

Illyasviel von Einzbern.

Sakura's mouth went bone dry, and adrenaline shot through her. She had to move. She had to run, she had to find a way to warn Senpai, she had to-

_She's unconscious._

She had to get out of here. Berserker could be around, could be anywhere, and she couldn't be here when he-

_She's Senpai's enemy._

Sakura took a halting step forward, and the fingers on her right hand twitched.

_Senpai would die before he would kill this girl, but she wouldn't hesitate to kill him._

_She's helpless. You can scratch one Master off of Senpai's list, right here. He would never need to know, but you could help him. You could repay him for everything he's doing for you by keeping him safe. _

A suffocating darkness descended upon her.

_make sure she never hurts him again_

She took another step.

_snap her neck_

Her throat was pale and fragile and unprotected.

_drain her dry_

She had no wards raised. It would only take a moment to rip the life from her magic circuits.

_let her bleed_

For Shirou.

"_You're protecting me, right?"_

A sound in her mind like shattered glass.

This was wrong.

_bones crack skin tears_

This was _wrong._

_as easy as you killed the flowers_

_What am I doing? _she thought desperately, and forced herself to halt.

_as easy as you fixed the table_

The desire to kill this girl was so powerful, so overwhelmingly strong, but it wasn't _right_, it wasn't what Shirou, what Senpai would _want. _

_for shirou for SHIROU_

Was this who she was? Was this the person she wanted to be?

_YOU KNOW BEST_

Illya's chest rose and fell gently.

_**SHE CAN'T HURT HIM IF SHE'S DEAD**_

A trickle of dried blood had crusted in the corner of her lips.

_**KILL HER**_

_No no no no no no no_. Her hands trembled and shook, and she dug her nails into her palm. The pain pushed the darkness away, and she felt like herself again; shaky and weak and cowardly but _her, _and guilt rushed in to fill the void that the murderous intent had left. _I keep-_

_Rin stares at her from the doorway, wide eyed with surprise, and Sakura knows that one of them will not walk away from this._

_I keep trying to-_

_Warmth spreads with her belly as Shinji cringes, and she wants to laugh. Let him suffer as she has._

_What am I becoming?_

Snowflakes settled on the girl's face and melted, leaving tiny dots of moisture on her pale skin. Her breath misted in the cold air.

_stop the breath_

Shirou would never forgive her. Senpai would never forgive her.

_eyes bulge and face red_

Darkness pulsed at the corners of her vision, and she shook her head, pressing her fingers to her temples. _What is this?_ It didn't matter. What mattered was the _thought_ she had just had, what she had been planning to _do-_

To kill a little girl.

The voice in her head was silent, but that wasn't true, was it? That voice had been her voice. She could no more silence that voice than she could change herself into a good person.

She had to make it right. It didn't make any sense, but she had to make it right, and Shirou had not killed this girl the other day at the supermarket, and so she needed to follow his example. Shirou wouldn't kill a defenseless child. So she couldn't either. There was something backwards about the logic, but her thoughts were molasses, and she couldn't remember what.

Shirou wouldn't see the girl as an enemy Master. He would see her as someone to help. It was cold, and she was unconscious, and it was beginning to snow; would she freeze to death out here? She should…

_cross her off the list_

She should take her home. She should take the girl back and make sure she was okay. She could put Illya in the guest bed, and make sure she was warm until she woke up, and

_shirou's life for her blood_

"No," Sakura whispered, and she stepped forward. The urge to do something unforgivable had not receded, not entirely, but she could identify it now, and so she could fight it. "I have to help her…" Her foot crunched on a twig, and they were no longer alone.

Something came alive.

The first thing she noticed was a bass growl, the kind of protective animalistic warning that she imagined presaged one's throat being torn out by wolves, but amplified by the most powerful speaker she could imagine. The presence crashed into her all at once, but she forced herself to stay still. To show weakness could be to-

The thought was not even complete when one of the trees shifted, and she realized that she was _not_ looking at a tree. The coloring was the same, and the figure had been perfectly still, so it wasn't surprising that she hadn't noticed its camouflage, but that wouldn't make her any less dead in a few seconds.

The great, hulking beast that stepped out of the trees matched Shirou's description of Berserker exactly, right down to the heavy stone axe-sword and the glowing red eyes. The ground shook with every step, and the rumbling growl continued unabated, the monster's throat quivering with the sound. _Thud. Thud. Thud. _It moved slowly, but that wouldn't last if it decided to kill; she'd heard from Shirou how unbelievably fast that thing could go. It stood over the unconscious little girl protectively, its weapon dragged behind it, carving a line in the dirt.

It took every fiber of willpower Sakura possessed not to turn and flee, or to quail in terror, or to simply pass out on the spot. She was defenseless. Nothing she could do would save her from being cut in half by Berserker's wrath, if he so decided. Instead, she smiled warmly, just like she'd always practiced. "I'm not here to hurt anybody," she said quietly, ignoring the part of her that still demanded blood and the part of her that screamed to turn and run. _This is like one of Grandfather's illusions. The ones where he wants me to show weakness, but that won't actually hurt me unless I let it. _

Berserker bared his teeth threateningly, shifting his grip on his sword to something more ready to swing.

_Slow breaths. Slow breathing. Just like Senpai would do. Stay calm._

"She's your Master, right?" she asked, her voice as gentle as she could manage. Berserker didn't react, but neither did he attack. _This is less scary than the worm pit. At least… at least if I mess this up it'll be over quick. _"She's hurt, I think. I want to help her. You want to help her too, right?"

The monster glared hatefully down at her. His red eyes burned with animalistic malice. _He must be under some command_, she realized. _Whatever she was doing, she wanted to be protected, but didn't want him flying off the handle and making a scene during the daytime if he didn't have to._ Which meant that as long as he didn't think she was about to attack, he would simply remain protective.

That realization wasn't as soothing as she might have hoped.

She raised her hands slowly, showing Berserker that she was unarmed. He snarled, a sound like a jet engine, but she didn't flinch. She took a slow step forward. "I want to bring her somewhere safe. She helped S- someone I care about a couple of days ago, so I owe her." _Like that spell that would hurt me if I screamed. That's all this is. _She wasn't good at a lot, but she knew how to endure. _I've trained for this. _She took another step, and Berserker roared, blasting her with hot, rank breath, slamming his axe-sword into the ground at his side. _I've trained for this. _It blew her hair back and threw chunks of dirt into her face, but still, she refused to flinch. _I've trained for this. _"Will you let me help her?"

Berserker's eyes narrowed, and he stared into her and through her. Something was happening in his head, but she couldn't see what it was. _He's probably deciding whether or not to squash you like a bug,_ she thought, and she almost laughed. That probably would have gotten her killed too. He gazed down at her.

She gazed levelly back. She smiled again, closing her eyes this time in a desperate gamble that the less threatening she looked, the less likely he would be to eviscerate her. She didn't know how to look any less threatening than that.

She cracked an eyelid enough to see his shape. He was still. For a long, long time, he was statue-still. Finally, agonizingly slowly, Berserker stepped back far enough that Sakura could reach the girl.

Half-expecting that Berserker would change his mind and disembowel her anyway, Sakura approached the girl. The monster still stood unnervingly close, heavy blasts of steam pouring from his mouth in the cold air, gazing down at her. Ready to stop her should she do something he didn't like. This close, he stank like a slab of rotting meat, but she didn't react. _The worm pit smells worse than him._

Kneeling down, she pressed her fingers to the girl's neck, making sure she had a regular pulse; somewhere above her, Berserker growled, but she forced her eyes to stay on Illya. _Don't show weakness._ Sakura was hardly a trained medical professional, but she'd done her share of work in the nurse's office at school, and she'd learned a couple things that only occasionally came in handy.

Maybe now would be one of those times.

Illya's pulse was steady and strong. If there was some deeper problem, it wasn't with her heart. Her breathing was also regular — the subtle rise and fall of her chest and the small puffs of white air from her mouth told Sakura that much. Her skin was cold to the touch, but that wasn't much wonder in this winter air. Next, Sakura pulled up one side of Illya's hat, then removed one of her gloves, checking for signs of frostbite. It had been very cold the night before, and Sakura didn't know how long Illya had been out here, but nothing looked like it was setting in. _Hypothermia_ _might be a problem, but I can't check her temperature out here._

It was strange to think that this girl was the one who had almost killed Senpai the other night. That this girl could control the monstrosity standing over them. It didn't make sense to her tired brain, even with the subtle aura of magecraft drifting off of her. The voice in her head — the voice of her own bloodlust — had stopped talking. All that was left in its place was a bone-deep regret.

Whether it was regret that Illya was still alive, or regret for wanting to hurt her in the first place, Sakura wasn't sure. She didn't like the uncertainty. _You know what kind of person you are._

There wasn't much she could do for Illya out here, other than to watch her, and maybe hope she didn't freeze to death before Sakura's eyes. _I need to bring her home,_ she thought with sudden clarity. _It's what Senpai would do._ With a quiet exhalation, she looked back up at Berserker, who was watching her every move with vicious, motionless intensity. She smiled up at him. She didn't feel it. "I want to bring her home-"

The terrifying Servant started to growl again, baring teeth like tombstones.

Sakura forced herself to continue, her voice level. "-So that I can get her warm. Do you know what hypothermia is? When a person gets too cold, they can get very sick. I don't want that to happen, do you?"

Berserker didn't respond, except to continue that unnatural, unnerving growl. It wasn't a sound anything that had ever been human should have been able to make.

_What kind of thing would convince something like him?_ She had no idea what the answer to that question was, so she kept barreling on, speaking in the kind of soothing monotone one might use when being threatened by a strange dog. "I can put her in a real bed, get her some blankets, maybe make her some soup…" She closed her eyes again, tilting her head in as innocent a smile as she could imagine with her heart in her throat. "Does little Illya like hot chocolate? I think I could make her some of that."

The growl trailed off, but the monster's expression didn't change. Something told Sakura he was still unconvinced.

"You can come too, of course," Sakura said, trying desperately not to sound like she was desperate. "You can follow me all the way back, and make sure I'm taking good care of her." _Did I just invite Berserker into Senpai's house? _was immediately followed by _Can Berserker __**fit**_ _in Senpai's house?,_ which was in turn followed by _Oh no, what am I doing?_

That last one was kind of an old friend.

Berserker looked down at her, then with a grunt like a chuffing dog, stepped back, looking pointedly out at the road. The message was clear. _Go. But I'll be watching._

Sakura smiled gratefully, relief flooding through her in a wave so powerful she almost collapsed, then stood to give Berserker a deep bow of gratitude. "Thank you," she said, then set about picking the little girl up. Sakura wasn't very strong; she expected to struggle more than a little, and was halfway afraid that she'd have to ask Berserker to carry his own Master for her.

She didn't expect Illya to be as light as she was. _It's like she's barely there._

Sakura could relate to that.

* * *

Sakura didn't want to put Illya in her own bed (how strange it was that after one night, she thought of it as _her bed_), but she couldn't come up with a better place. It was the softest, warmest place in the whole house, so her objections could only be personal.

_It's __**not**_ _your bed. Stop being territorial._

She didn't have a good argument for that.

Sakura sat over the girl's sleeping form for a few minutes, watchful for any sign of trouble or stirring, but that was the exact kind of activity she tried to avoid. The whole… sitting-silently-with-nothing-to-do-but-think thing. She was getting antsy, and the dark thoughts were creeping in, so she left the room, closing the door gently behind her, to find something to do.

Should she try to send Rin and Senpai a message? It would take a lot out of her, but she could probably magic something up if she needed to. _It would just worry them,_ she reasoned. There wasn't much left that needed cleaning, and Shirou had made enough food this morning to make do for several meals, so she found herself just kind of… wandering.

Which was how she found herself standing in the doorway to Senpai's room. Something had drawn her there, and she didn't know what it was; the night before hadn't been the first time she'd ever been in there, but…

"But" nothing. She was being a creep. She wasn't entitled to his space.

She moved on, but a part of her lingered.

Now that she was moving again, the loneliness wasn't as bad as it had been the day before. She felt a little like a ghost, all alone, wandering the halls of some abandoned western mansion. All she needed was an ethereal, flowing white dress to make it complete. "Ooooo," she said, waving her hands in a rough approximation of a ghostly moan, and giggled. She felt… not _lighter_, exactly, but as though something painful that she hadn't even been aware of had been purged from her.

She wasn't sure if she should be concerned about that, but she also didn't want to look the gift horse in the mouth on this one.

As she walked, she ran her fingers along a familiar wall, the cool surface just this side of smooth to her touch. _This really is a wonderful house_, she thought, trying to ignore the pang of longing that it elicited. _Shirou is lucky. _What must it be like to wake up in one's home, not having to remember all the horrible things that had happened to you under that very same roof?

There was another thought that she wanted to have, but that she didn't let herself feel; it was too big, too scary — her good mood felt especially precarious, and lamenting what she couldn't have wouldn't do her any good.

She just had to avoid thinking about why the side of her neck hurt so badly. Easy.

Senpai didn't have much in the way of possessions; he lived simply, and that fact didn't seem to bother him all that much. He liked to talk about what a full life he lived, and how he just didn't have time for much else. She wasn't sure how genuine that emotion was, but it did mean that there wasn't a whole lot in the house to keep one entertained without company. _He does always seem happy to see me and Ms. Fujimura._

Inevitably, she ended up standing in front of his one sparse bookshelf (well, the one shelf that wasn't full of books about cooking), examining for the hundredth time his collection. A small pile of manga volumes (she wondered how many of them had been Shinji's, years ago, before their relationship had soured). A book on blacksmithing (he'd told her that he'd tried to learn that particular skill, but that he hadn't had the time or the equipment). A few novels that had probably mostly been gifts. A couple nonfiction works on mythology, but nothing that looked to immediately pertain to their situation.

Senpai wasn't much of a reader, but that was okay. He had a lot of other skills, and he was a hard worker.

Nothing immediately excited her, but she grabbed one of the manga volumes that looked halfway interesting, then shuffled back to the guest room to sit by Illya and read to herself. _When was the last time I sat down to read something because I wanted to?_ She couldn't remember. Illya was still asleep, and a little bit of color had come back into her pale cheeks, so Sakura took a seat on the floor and cracked it open.

Time passed. For a little while, Sakura didn't think about the Holy Grail War, or about how much danger Senpai was in, or the gibbering mess she had been just a few hours ago. All of that was far away.

"Where am I?"

The sound of the quiet, unsteady voice snapped Sakura out of her trance, and her head shot up. The little girl was lying in bed, looking at her with unfocused eyes, an expression Sakura couldn't read on her face. _Her eyes are red. Red like blood. _Sakura cleared her throat, stood, and bowed politely. "You're in Shirou's house," she said, halfway apologetic. "I found you out in the cold, so I brought you home to try to help."

"Home," Illya said faintly. She looked around the room, surveying her surroundings with an exhausted caution. "You're that Makiri girl, aren't you?" She coughed weakly, struggling to sit up, and Sakura gestured to a glass of room temperature tap water on the nightstand. Illya looked at it, clearly suspicious.

"We're Matou now," Sakura said quietly, that familiar feeling of unpleasant emptiness spreading within her gut. "But yes. I can't exactly hide that if you already know who I am." _What else does she know? _Still, as a gesture of goodwill, Sakura took the glass and sipped it, before Illya's eyes. "It's not poisoned. If I wanted to hurt you, I'd just have left you out there." _That last part's not exactly true, but it's close enough._ She held the glass out. _I hope she can't read my mind._

_kill her before-_

_Shut up,_ she thought.

Illya took it and drank deeply, as if it were the first water she'd seen in days. For all Sakura knew, it might be.

"Um," Sakura said, unconsciously adjusting the scarf to make sure it was still wrapped tightly around her neck. "I want you to know that I understand we're enemies, but Senpai wouldn't want us to fight, and I'm not a Master."

Illya lowered the now half-empty glass with a bitter laugh. "That sounds like him," she said, suddenly sounding much older than her apparent years. She swirled the water, strangely careful not to spill a single drop on the sheets. "I guess it's not just him that's an idiot. The Holy Grail War is a battle to the death, no matter how many times you guys try to make peace."

Sakura intimately knew the sound of someone trying to convince themselves of something they weren't sure of, and Illya didn't exactly buy what she was selling herself. "Still," she said, "Senpai said you saved his life at the grocery store, and I'm very grateful for that. It was the least I could do."

Illya frowned at her with those wide, unsettling red eyes. "What's your name?"

"Sakura," she said. "It's nice to meet you."

There was a depth to Illya's gaze that didn't mesh with the childish features. A kind of cunning intelligence. A suspicion. A world-weariness. A cynicism. But also a perceptiveness, Sakura thought nervously, that seemed to cut straight to her core.

She was silent for a long time, studying Sakura. Piercing her with her eyes.

"What are you, Sakura?" Illya finally asked, and the words were like a shiv between Sakura's ribs.

_She knows. She knows she knows-_

But what did she know? Sakura wasn't sure, but that didn't stop the screaming paranoia. "I don't-"

Illya shook her head, her mouth set in a tight line. "I can feel something," she said, and her voice was tense; her body seemed weak as a kitten, but that didn't always translate one-to-one with one's magical ability. "Don't pretend you're normal." It wasn't an accusation, really, but Sakura found herself shrinking away from the girl as though she'd started screaming and brandishing a knife. "What are you?"

_**What art thou?**_

"_I won't let it change you."_

"I'm just me," Sakura whispered. It was the only thing she could think to say. _What can she see? What can she see that I can't? What can everyone see that I can't?_

"You-" Illya began, then fell into another coughing fit. This time, a bit of water did splash down into her lap before it subsided, and she pressed the glass to her chapped lips once again.

Sakura waited patiently, trying to compose herself and failing miserably. She could only imagine the look that was on her face. "What… am I?"

Illya's eyes flicked to her, and Sakura flinched. Again, she didn't speak, but rather, just studied. The empty glass met the wooden nightstand with a quiet _clink_. There was something between mistrust and understanding in her gaze.

Sakura eyed it nervously. "Would you like some more water? Tea? Hot chocolate?"

"Where's Berserker?" Illya asked instead.

"Outside," Sakura replied. "I convinced him not to break Senpai's walls because it would be hard for you to get better if you were still cold." _I still don't know how that worked._ "He's very protective."

"What are you doing here?" Illya asked pointedly, the moment Sakura was done talking. "Your brother is an enemy Master. What side are you on?"

Sakura looked down at her hands. _I was trying so hard not to think about Nii-san, and it was almost working._ "I'm…" She hesitated. She knew the answer, but to say it would be the ultimate betrayal — the one that could never be taken back or forgiven. She was here, and had _been_ here, but she still had not committed all the way to helping Senpai. She knew things she hadn't told him. About a lot of things, but mostly about Rider. She was holding back.

_What side are you on?_

If the choice came between her brother and Senpai… what would she do?

She knew the answer, and it ate away at her like battery acid.

"I'm on Shirou's side," she said in a small voice, but to her, it sounded like an iron gate slamming shut forever. Her hands clenched into impotent fists, and she set her jaw defiantly. "I'm going to protect him."

"And you still saved me," Illya said in disbelief. "I'll tell you one last time. He's an idiot, with idiotic ideas. You can't protect him without getting your hands dirty. Especially if _he_ won't."

Sakura didn't look up at her. "Are you trying to argue that I should kill you here and now?" She could hear the hollow echo in her voice.

Illya was silent. "You wouldn't. Berserker can be here faster than you can do anything to me."

"No," Sakura said softly, then looked up and smiled. For once… it was almost genuine. Almost. "I wouldn't. But not because I'd die trying."

Illya frowned at her, clearly trying to understand, and either not getting it or not _letting_ herself get it. "You care about him that much."

"I love him," she said, and the words were out before she could take them back. Horror deeper than mere shame lanced through her from every direction, and she pressed her hands to her mouth as if to prevent anything from making what she'd just said even worse. _I can't be. I can't be. I shouldn't want what I can't have want what I don't deserve can never deserve-_

_**Should the worst come to pass, I will stand ready to ensure no harm shall come to either thy sister or the man thou love.**_

Illya watched Sakura's distress with a surprisingly soft expression. "You love him," she echoed, but not in mockery. It was more… thoughtful than that. More distant. As if it were something she'd never considered.

Sakura's face burned, and her blood had been replaced with liquid guilt as she stared down at the floor, protectively tugging her scarf tighter. "Senpai is a good person. I don't know why you hate him, and I don't think he does either, but…" She didn't know where she was going with this. She was babbling. "He doesn't deserve it. Hate me instead, if you want, but don't hate him. He cares about everyone, no matter how bad they are, and…" Her voice was shaking, but the dam had broken. "He wants to help. He always just wants to help, and even if he doesn't know how he _tries_, even when people don't deserve it, because he's a hero, and he doesn't think he is yet but he _is_, he's the best of us." A heavy shuddering breath as she ran out of air. She was talking so fast. "He doesn't see how broken people are. He doesn't see the cracks and the dirt and the blood, he doesn't hate me for them, and I don't understand _why_, but he _doesn't_ and it makes me want to be _better_." She squeezed her eyes shut tight, and she saw stars. "It makes me want to stop being a bad person and do something _good,_ even if all I can do is help someone who wants to kill him because that's what _he_ would do. I..." Her voice cracked, trailing off into something barely a whisper. "I want to make him happy. Because he makes me happy. And I'll never be able to without lying to him."

Her eyes remained firmly closed, so she couldn't see Illya's reaction to her outburst. She didn't know why she'd said all that. She didn't even let herself _think_ like that, because as much as she deserved the pain of knowing that kind of happiness was unattainable, she still wanted to delude herself into thinking there was hope.

Silence. Not even the rustle of sheets broke the tension.

"He's that kind of person?" Illya said, but behind the words Sakura could feel a familiar ocean of loneliness and despair.

Sakura nodded. "He is," she whispered.

"I thought I knew a person like that once," Illya said, and though her voice was steady, that barely hidden shimmering black loss made Sakura want to cry for her. "I thought I did."

* * *

_Note: You ever look at something you've written and go "wow, I don't think I'm okay?"_

_That's about where I'm at on this one. It's honest but it's... rough. I've been struggling more with my shit lately, and it sucks. Turns out writing is hard when you're depressed._

_Thanks, y'all. See you in two weeks._

_Next chapter: Malak ul-Maut_


	27. Malak ul-Maut

_Fun fact: thee and thou et cetera are actually more of an informal way to say "you". King Hassan calling someone "you" would be a sign of respect!_

_Before we start, a quick thanks to everyone who sent encouraging comments last time. They really made me feel a little better about what I'm doing._

* * *

There was no doubt about it — the magical residue was leading them to the church. Rin wasn't sure what to make of that.

She also wasn't sure what to make of the strange path their target had taken. It meandered all over town, bouncing from the bridge to several clothing stores to the dingiest restaurant Rin had ever seen to… Seemingly everywhere. A bookstore. A series of bars. A shoe store. Another bookstore. The park. Even a _pet store_. Each new location was stranger than the last, and none of it seemed to hold much relevance or interest. It was a mystery that she supposed would only be solved once they tracked down…

Whoever it was that they were tracking down.

Now, though, the trail was straight as an arrow. No more diversions, no more stops. _Could they be working with Kirei?_ Rin pondered. _Or could they be going to kill him? That seems like something Zouken would do. _But that was an assumption, too. She didn't _know_ that Zouken was even still involved. She thought back to all the dead bugs in the old robe — for all she knew, he'd been disintegrated down to the bone.

It was easy to think about their new enemy, because thinking about what Assassin and Archer had just told them was very difficult. She understood the concept just fine, but Shirou had needed a lot of clarification. She was ping-ponging between mulling it over and shoving it as far out of sight as she could put it. _A cataclysm_, she thought tiredly. _That's what they kept calling it._ Something they _had_ to stop. And if they couldn't stop it, something to prepare for.

"_There's hope, right?" she asked. "This isn't game over. Whatever's going to happen can be prevented."_

_Archer and Assassin were quiet. _

_Fear tickled the back of her neck, hairs rising. "Guys?"_

"_**There is always hope," **__Assassin said. _"_**In the darkest night, one's hope is one's salvation. Remember, though, that should the cataclysm come to pass, we have not necessarily failed. We must also be ready to minimize the consequences."**_

_She nodded, satisfied._

_It was only much later that she would realize that he hadn't actually answered her question._

The church drew nearer.

The fear was starting to build in a way she didn't like. Not that she ever particularly _liked_ being afraid, but there was a difference between being afraid of something you understood and being afraid of something you didn't. She didn't know what to prepare for. She didn't know what was possible. All she had was speculation, and even that was far too open.

A Pseudoservant.

Possibly a Divine Spirit.

What did that mean?

What could such an existence do?

What did it want with the church?

"So," Shirou said nervously, "do we have a plan?"

Well, this was as good a time as any, Rin thought. "We should talk about that," she said, coming to a stop. There weren't any people around that she could see, and if they walked much further, they would be _at_ the church. "We need to figure that out."

"That's hard when we don't know what's coming," Archer said flatly. "One being of indeterminate power, along with an unknown number of magic users. Rider might be there, if we guessed right about who's holding her leash."

"**We require reconnaissance,"** Assassin rumbled. "**I can gather information. So long as I do not intend to kill, I can make myself very difficult to detect."**

"That seems like an inconvenient weakness for an Assassin," Archer said. "You can't sneak up on people you want to kill?"

"**It keeps my boredom sated,"** Assassin said, and Rin snorted.

"Okay," she said, "so Assassin will scout the area, and hopefully get us something useful to work with."

"Are you good with that, Assassin?" Shirou asked earnestly, as if Assassin hadn't been the one to suggest the idea in the first place.

"**Of course."**

Shirou nodded seriously. "Alright. Be careful, okay?"

"**I am always careful."**

Rin was never quite sure what to make of the relationship those two had. Sometimes, Shirou showed nothing but respect for his Servant, and others… he seemed to think she couldn't sense the resentment and anger boiling away under his words, but there were times when he seemed to loathe Assassin.

She should probably ask him about that sometime.

"What about you, Archer?" she asked. "You gonna help him out with that?"

Even invisible, she could practically hear her asshole Servant's shrug. "I'd just get in the way. I don't have Presence Concealment, and there isn't a perch nearby with a good angle on the church."

Rin could think of a half a dozen points that he would actually be _useful_ at, but she didn't want to argue right now.

Assassin's heavy aura vanished.

"Convenient," she muttered. "Archer, just go be lookout until Assassin gets back."

"As you command, Master," he said in the most condescending tone imaginable, then vanished.

Silence hung over them as they waited. A bird twittered somewhere nearby in a strange contrast to the heavy flakes of snow drifting on the breeze. Rin shivered, hugging herself a little to try to warm herself up, and to pretend that she wasn't shivering.

Shirou looked uncomfortable too, and not because of the cold.

"What?" She asked him. "You've obviously got something on your mind."

He frowned. "Was it that obvious?"

Rin rolled her eyes. "Yes. Spit it out."

"I just…" He sighed wearily, rubbing his hands together for warmth. "The hairs on the back of my neck keep standing up. I feel like I'm being watched. You ever get that feeling?"

"We _are _being watched," Rin said.

Shirou blanched. "What?"

She blinked at him. "That's Caster. She's been scrying us on and off ever since the theater. My wards are strong enough that I don't think she can hear us, but she can definitely see us."

"And you didn't _tell me that?"_

Rin shrugged. "I thought you knew."

Shirou groaned. "All that stuff. This is related, right?"

"It must be," Rin said quietly. "Nothing like this has ever happened before."

"A Psuedoservant," Shirou said slowly, the word clearly unfamiliar on his tongue. "I didn't know something like that was possible."

"You didn't know that regular Servants were possible a few days ago," Rin pointed out. "But you're not wrong to be incredulous. It's not something that anyone's ever been able to do. I don't know how he figured it out."

"Well," Shirou hesitated, clearly self-conscious about his own lack of experience. "You mentioned it looked like Einzbern magic, right? Maybe they're the ones who figured it out. We should ask Illya next time we see her."

Rin gave him a blank look. "If she's not trying to kill us, sure. But that doesn't make sense, either, you know? The Einzberns are powerful Magi, yeah, but this isn't their area of expertise. Their job in setting up the war is to prepare the Grail's vessel. Not summoning the Servants. Why would they know something like that? And even if they did, why would _Zouken_ know it? The Einzberns and the Makiris are enemies. They would never share that kind of thing."

"Maybe he stole it?" Shirou offered weakly.

"I _guess_," Rin said. "But if that's true, we open up a hundred other questions. I'm sick of all this guessing. I'd love to know something solid."

Shirou scratched the back of his neck, clearly feeling a little awkward. "Hopefully we're about to get some answers."

"If we don't get our stupid asses killed doing it," Rin muttered darkly.

"**There are three Servants on the church premises,"** Assassin said without preamble.

Shirou was remarkably calm as he responded, while Rin was busy clutching her chest and trying to talk herself out of a heart attack. "Welcome back."

"_Three?"_ she managed to choke.

"**The Lancer in blue. The... pink Rider. They are outside the main building, loitering. It seemed they were keeping watch. They sensed me not."**

"So they're working together," Shirou said thoughtfully. "We expected Rider, but Lancer? We still don't know who he's working for, right?"

Rin nodded, though the cold hand of fear was dancing uncomfortably along her spine. They'd known it would be bad, but this… This was somehow even worse than she'd imagined.

Once again, she'd underestimated how deep the shit she was standing in was, and she was probably about to pay for it. "So Lancer, Rider," she said, more calmly than she felt. "The third?"

"**I could not get close enough to verify its identity."**

"You couldn't—" Rin began incredulously, but Shirou shook his head, and she deferred to him. It felt bad to do, but Assassin _was_ his Servant.

"**There was no problem with Rider or Lancer; neither of them was perceptive enough to penetrate my concealment. However," **Assassin continued, and for a moment Rin thought the all-powerful, above-it-all monster was unnerved, and that was even more terrifying than whatever he was about to say. "**As I drew near the entrance, I could feel the eyes of another upon me. Whatever dwelled within the church felt my approach as if I had not bothered to conceal myself at all."** There was a heavy silence. "**It was… a familiar presence."**

Shirou's brow furrowed. "Assassin? Are you okay?" He sounded about as off kilter as Rin felt.

"**I am well,"** Assassin said, and his voice was as level and steady as Rin had ever heard it. If Shirou had not noticed well enough to say something himself, she'd have thought she'd imagined that the Servant had been shaken at all. "**It was not a specific recollection that I experienced. What I felt was the fingerprint of one touched by Allah himself."**

"So when we speculated that the Pseudoservant might be a Divine Spirit…"

"**I believe it to be a Malak. A Messenger dwells within the church."**

"You're talking about an angel, aren't you?" Rin asked quietly.

"**I am."**

A shadow passed over Shirou's face, as though he'd remembered something horrifying. "Assassin?"

"**Yes?"**

"You told me you would put your God above anything else," he said. His face was pale, but his voice was admirably steady. "How does an angel fit into that?"

Assassin was quiet for a long time.

The wind blew softly, swirling snow around them. A car hummed obliviously past, lights on under the cloudy sky.

"**That remains to be seen," **he said finally.

Another chill that had nothing to do with the cold air ran through Rin. "We should leave. This was a mistake. Coming here was a mistake." She could hear the rising panic in her own voice, and she _hated it, _hated _herself_ for it, but every step she took to try to combat it was like gasoline on a fire. "We need more information. We need… I don't know, but we need _something_."

"Tohsaka," Shirou said gently, but the glare she shot him was fiery enough to almost physically knock him back. Still, he pressed on. "We came here for a reason. This _is _where we get more information. You keep telling me that war is dangerous, and I get it, but—"

"But you have no idea the kind of power a Divine Spirit has," she said coldly.

"No, I don't, not specifically, but—"

"**Contractor. Rin Tohsaka. The Malak yet gathers his strength. He is dangerous, but the longer we leave him, the more time he will have to grow accustomed to his new mortal flesh, and the more of his power he will be able to access. There will not be a better time to remove him from the board."**

His voice was like a slap in the face, or maybe a bucket of ice water. Forcing her growing terror back under control, Rin grit her teeth and closed her eyes. "Archer," she said tersely. "How much of that did you hear?"

"All of it," Archer's lazy voice came back. "We sound pretty fucked."

"Thanks for that," she growled. "Come back. We need to strategize."

* * *

The plan they'd come up with was probably going to get all of them killed, but it was marginally better than nothing, so Archer could only object so strenuously.

The Pseudoservant —the Malak, as Assassin called it — was out of their league. It just was, and nothing they could do would change the vast gulf in power between a Heroic Spirit and a Divine Spirit. There were two things that might — _might_ — tip the odds in their favor, however. The first was that the Malak was new to the material world, and that it would take time for it to be able to access its full strength. Power didn't flow the same way for mortals as it did for the Divine, and while the Malak would not be mortal, Rin had explained, it would also be constrained by its flesh. Time would erase that handicap.

The second factor?

They had Assassin.

"**Thou of little faith, Archer in Red. Dost thou believe Man is the only creature that has tasted finality at my hands? I have killed even that which had never before conceptualized Death,"** Assassin had intoned. Somehow, it didn't even sound like a boast. "**I am Death's left hand. I am the Evening Bell's most trusted weapon. Immortality may be armor against that which is mortal, but it is as tattered cloth before my blade. If a being can be said to possess a Life, no matter how metaphorically, a being can be killed."**

Not even Archer had been able to argue with that. Despite everything, he believed it. He hated when things gave him hope. If you didn't have hope, you couldn't be disappointed when the universe inevitably spat in your face.

"So we're decided," Rin said quietly into their three-person-and-a-ghost huddle. "Shirou and I will wait out here, because we'll only get in the way. Archer, you're going to march right through the front gate and engage Lancer and Rider in combat."

"What if I keep them distracted with my stand-up routine?" Archer said, trying to cover up how anxious he was by being a dick.

"I don't care if you walk in there, whip off your clothes, and start a threesome," Rin snapped. "You just need to keep those two busy long enough for the rest to happen. If you can kill either or both of them, that'd be great, but it's not the objective right now. First priority is to hold their attention. Second is survival. Getting a kill is third." Archer opened his mouth, and Rin held up an irritated hand. "You aren't allowed to make any more jokes about kicking asses, seeing as how bad you fucked that one up with Berserker."

Archer shrugged, completely unbothered.

"Assassin," she said, turning her head slightly to look up at the two points of burning blue flame suspended in the air. "I don't think I need to tell you what your job is again, but for the courtesy of everyone else here, your job is to infiltrate the church, find the Malak, and kill the shit out of it before it can get stronger. Once you engage, you'll have about eight minutes before Shirou starts taking real damage."

"**It will be over before that happens."**

"Good," Rin said, and Archer knew her well enough to know that her easy confidence was absolutely a facade. "Time for you to live up to your class."

"**I will not fail."**

Rin looked at each of them in turn, but her gaze lingered longest on Shirou, badly hidden concern flickering across her brow.

_You have bigger things to worry about than him_, Archer thought, and his hands itched for violence. _I could end him._ The intrusive thought hit him at odd moments, taking him off guard almost every time. As much as he so badly wanted to… he'd committed to the path of the Guardian, this time. Sometimes things were more important than his grudge.

"Are you okay?" Rin asked the moron.

Shirou nodded, but his cheeks were a little green. Archer hated how easily he could read him, and he wondered (not for the first time) whether or not that ability was mutual. "I'm fine," he said quietly. "I'm ready to die if I have to."

"Well," Rin said with forced brightness, "even if our Servants die, that doesn't mean we will." The two little dumbasses sounded like they were already standing on the gallows, with the hangman stalking unseen behind them with his rope.

"I'm standing right here, you know," Archer said dryly, and she glared at him.

Good. She was feeling better already.

* * *

Archer pressed his back to the stone wall and took a deep breath.

This was it.

The calm before the storm.

He was prepared to die. He was _always _prepared to die. In some ways, the best case here would be to succeed in his mission, and to die doing it. He'd have done his requisite good deed, he'd have nudged the timeline away from certain destruction, and he'd be free to go.

_You didn't want to say it out loud._

There was… a complication, though.

_You didn't want to take their hope from them._

Ridiculous. And yet—

_The Cataclysm is unstoppable._

They wanted to believe.

_If Assassin kills the Malak, that just means that it wasn't the cause, and it'll happen anyway._

What good had destiny ever done for him, anyway? Fuck destiny. What was that one line from that old American movie about the killer robots from the future? No fate but what we make for ourselves.

_Shit, I guess I'm the killer robot in this scenario,_ he thought, _which doesn't seem to bode well for my chances._

He flexed his fingers, and Kanshou and Bakuya appeared in his grip. They weren't the most powerful swords he'd ever used, but they felt like _his_ in a way that none of the others did. They fit in his hands as if they'd been moulded for each other, and he knew their weights and balances as if they were extensions of his own body. Other swords could do more damage, could take a hit better… but he'd never fight more skillfully using anything else.

The Malak's pet Servants chattered incessantly within. He recognized the laconic, irritating voice of the Lancer in blue, but the chirping, girlish voice that must belong to Rider was unfamiliar. His vision swirled again, doubled for a moment, and returned to normal before he even had a chance to blink.

Something about that Rider was not right, the way Assassin wasn't right, the way the whole _world_ wasn't right.

He put that out of his mind. It was irrelevant, and he couldn't afford distractions.

To his side, Assassin's burning blue eyes appeared.

He met their gaze.

The eyes moved in what was clearly a nod.

_It was time._

The way he'd done a thousand times, back when he'd been alive, Archer spun through the open gateway. _Breach and clear._

The scene spread out before him like a frozen tableau. Nothing moved; not the grass, not the Servants before him, not even the snow flooding the air. The church door directly in front of him. Lancer leaning against it, looking off to his left. Rider, wearing something horrific and gaudy that he had no time to unpack, about twenty feet away on a diagonal to his right, facing toward Lancer. Her back mostly toward him.

Before he lost the momentum of his entry, he threw the swords spinning off in twin, mirrored parabolic arcs. Away from each other as they flew, then closer, until they would meet buried in Lancer's chest—

He did not wait to see if they hit before he threw himself to the right, great black bow materializing in his hands as he flew. No time for careful aim, but he was an _Archer_, and he had no time for such things—

Loose. Loose. Loose.

Three arrows sang through the air before he landed in a roll and regained his feet.

Another snapshot. Lancer was already on his feet, lance in hand, charging him, Kanshou and Bakuya buried uselessly in the heavy church door; Rider had whirled to face him, an animalistic snarl on her lips and three arrows jutting from her back.

Four seconds had passed.

Archer smirked. Going to die or not, he was going to make this fun.

They were in an enclosed arena, so it would be difficult to get distance on either of them, let alone both — while it would be easy for them to corner him, if he got sloppy.

Good thing he never got sloppy.

With a wave of his free hand and an infusion of mana, seven swords appeared in the air above Lancer, and as he clenched his fist they spiked down as one. Each one missed without Lancer seeming to have to dodge them at all. _Interesting. Protection From Arrows?_ Projectiles seemed ineffective against him.

With a yell, Lancer threw his whole body into a devastating thrust, the wickedly sharp point of his Gae Bolg driving straight at his chest—

But the bow was made of material as resilient as any sword, and it held up admirably as Archer slammed it downward into the shaft of the spear. The point crunched deep into the snowy ground, and like a professional pole-vaulter, Lancer let the momentum carry him forward, sending him soaring through the air over Archer's head.

Archer ducked the follow up swing as the spear followed, and with a rush of adrenaline singing in his veins Projected another half dozen swords in a semi-circle around Rider, who was now rushing his position with what looked like a riding crop. They shot toward her like bullets from a gun, and as she prepared to swat away as many as she could, he turned to meet Lancer's next attack.

This jab found itself caught between the bow and the string, and as Archer twisted and yanked the weapon, he lashed out with a vicious kick to Lancer's solar plexus. He connected with a heavy _thud,_ Lancer stumbled back, and—

The crop cracked against the back of his head, and a world of pain far beyond anything he had ever expected from that thing shot through his whole self, doubling his vision again and dropping him to his knees. He groaned, summoning Kanshou to his free hand, and barely deflected a second hit. Everything wavered sickeningly, waves of pain emanating from the point of impact.

Rider snarled. Archer twisted, raising Kanshou just in time to redirect another swing, and threw himself away from the pair. Lancer had recovered from the blow, and Rider only looked _pissed_, even as three arrows and one sword protruded from her bleeding body. More than enough to kill a human, but that was to be expected; it would take more than that to end a Servant.

_This might be harder than I anticipated. _

Turning a somersault backwards into a backflip that brought him to his feet, he muttered a word, and sword points shot up from the ground, as though the buried dead themselves had come alive to strike at Lancer and Rider's feet. They jumped away — and collided in midair, landing hard on their feet. Rider hardly seemed to have noticed, but Lancer looked irritated.

The beginnings of a plan began to form.

_They don't know how to work together,_ he realized at once. _I don't need to keep them separate. I need to keep them in their own way. _

And so the dance continued.

None of them spoke. There was no time for such pleasantries when death hung on every breath and trailed along every minuscule motion. To pause to speak, to interrupt one's breathing in such a way, would be a death sentence.

Like herding sheep in reverse, he kept his angles tight, precise — when each struck, the other was always in the crossfire. To hope that he could get one of them to kill the other in such a way was far too much to hope for, but as a delaying tactic? It kept him alive.

His speed and his cunning were his greatest strengths, and he did not allow them to get a bead on him, nor to grow comfortable with his tactics. When he could get some distance, he peppered them with arrows, except when he didn't. He struck from behind with swords and projectiles, except when it would have been expected. He dodged and he parried and he moved, but after that first barrage, he could not land another solid blow. Rider was not even slowed by her wounds, and Lancer was untouched.

_Parry Rider. Dip backward to avoid the follow up. Jump over Lancer's sweep, and take a swing at Rider before your feet touch ground._

The spear passed within a hairbreadth of Rider's arm, just as she was ready to strike.

"Get out of my way," she snarled, and Archer couldn't keep the smirk from his face. He had the barest instant to react to her distraction-

A rapier sprouted like a grotesque flower from the center of Rider's foot in a spray of blood and dirt, and she stumbled with an indignant, angry wail. Archer's foot shot out and took her in the side of the head with a meaty _crunch_. Something more than just her sunglasses broke, and she dropped limply to the ground.

Unconscious, but not dead. If he didn't finish her off, she would recover quickly.

He would have no such opportunity with Lancer in the fight. In a way, taking care of Rider had been the easy part. Not because she was less skillful or less powerful, but because they made such an absolutely godawful shitshow of a team that they were both fighting way below their actual skill levels.

This was where it got tough.

Archer jumped back, and Lancer took the opportunity to step away as well. His stance was casually lazy, but they'd fought enough at the school all those days ago that Archer knew what kind of danger lurked under the surface.

"I should thank you for that one, actually," Lancer said offhandedly. "That is a heinous bitch you just kicked in the face."

"You look pretty similar from where I'm standing," Archer replied calmly. A drop of sweat or blood ran down his cheek, but he didn't drop his guard to wipe it away.

"I thought Archers were supposed to have good eyesight," Lancer retorted, and he sounded genuinely offended. "Don't compare me to her."

"I don't care about your little squabbles." This was dull, but every second they spent talking was another second that he was buying Assassin to do his thing. _Come on, buddy, don't let me down._

Lancer lowered his spear and raised an eyebrow. "What happened to you, guy? Were you this grim last time?" He sighed heavily. "You know, I was actually looking forward to fighting you again. This is disappointing. Don't be such a stick in the mud." He bounced on his heels, grinning like an idiot. "Come on, have some fun with it. This is a warrior's dream, you know?"

"Bowing and scraping to an angel, you mean?"

As his body went still, Lancer's expression darkened. "I don't bow and scrape to anyone."

Archer snorted. "So, what, then? Not only following orders like a trained dog, but cooperating with someone you hate? What's that sound like to you?"

Lancer's fingers tightened on the spear. "He's my Master," he said tersely, all the joviality gone. "And he's miles better than the old one. I owe him for getting me out of that one."

Archer blinked, surprised. "Your old—"

That was all the distraction that Lancer needed. Without another word of warning, he was lunging, spear twirling deftly in his fingertips, ready to strike—

_CLANG._

The sound of impact rang out like a gong, and the flurry began. This time, there was no time to maneuver, no space to buy time. No distractions. No friendly fire. Just a master warrior and his weapon.

Kanshou and Bakuya sang and clashed and broke and sang again. The power in Lancer's blows was undiminished from their last encounter, but it was nothing compared to what it had felt like to parry Berserker's monstrous stone behemoth. Servants couldn't get stronger through exercise the way a mortal could, but experience was still the best teacher.

That time, Lancer had been grinning and laughing the whole while, like their deathmatch had been nothing more than a friendly sparring match between friends. This time, he looked serious — and the change was unnerving.

Archer parried, dropped Bakuya — Lancer's eyes followed it — and re-Projected the sword as soon as the distraction had taken hold. His swing came close, but Lancer bent out of the way just in the nick of time. The butt of the spear cracked against his shin, and though pain flared in his bones, he did not give an inch.

They clashed.

They clashed.

They clashed.

Still, they were evenly matched.

That was fine with Archer. His intent was not to kill, but to—

Lancer danced backward, and Archer did not follow.

Once more, they stood across from each other, parallel to the church doors.

"Do you think you can—" Archer began, but came up short.

Angry red light swirled around the tip of Lancer's spear, coalescing and concentrating. The world shook with the force of it. His grip tight, his mouth set in a grim rictus, he reared back to strike, as if they were side-by-side and not a couple dozen feet apart—

_Thud-thud._ Archer's heart thundered in his ears. The sense of death coming off of the lance was palpable, and in the deepest recesses of his soul, Archer knew that he would not survive a direct hit from the attack.

The swords fell to the ground, and he thrust his hands out before him in a last desperate projection.

"GAE-"

"RHO-"

The church exploded, and everything went white.

* * *

The Malak was in the catacombs beneath the church.

That suited the swordsman just fine.

He passed through the place of worship like a ghost. These were not his symbols; these were not his icons. He did not know if they held meaning for this church's parishioners, but things had been done here that would have turned his stomach, had he a stomach to turn.

That was interesting. He hadn't felt disgust in so long. Perhaps this form _had _brought him closer to who he had been as a man. It would not interfere with his duty, so it was a curiosity at worst. Something to be noted, and then ignored.

The eyes of the Malak were upon him, but he sensed no forthcoming malice or fear. He was an expected guest, then.

More and more interesting.

Two paths extended before the swordsman, and though he didn't know the concept of Schrodinger's Box, the analogy would have rung true — until he met the Malak and took the measure of him, each was equally true. Equally plausible.

The first path led to him decapitating the Malak, as he had beings beyond counting. The summoning had been cruel and unnatural, and the oily feeling of dislocation immersing the swordsman only grew stronger as he approached the epicenter. If this being was an affront to Allah, a perversion of His grand design, then the swordsman's purpose would be clear. Erasing this mistake.

In the second path, the Malak was no abomination, but its true self, acting as Allah's will in this world. There would be no hesitation in that case, either. He would not break the oaths he had made, but his priorities would... shift. He was a creature of duty, after all. His Contractor had taken the measure of him, and understood that the swordsman would put nothing above his task. Given that he still possessed two Command Seals, this eventuality would likely lead to the swordsman's death.

He would know which future was his soon enough.

The presence he sensed led him ever downward, below the church's basement, to a series of stone passageways carved into the Earth. The pathway was silent as the grave. The Archer was performing his task well, but he would not be able to hold forever.

The trail led to a final room with a rough-hewn altar, before which knelt before which knelt before which-

_a crackle like electricity_

The swordsman came to a halt.

The white raiments of a priest were draped over a large frame. The right arm was distended, misshapen, too large. The swordsman could not see the hand. The priest's head was bowed.

Power radiated from the figure like a cloud of blood in a pool.

Reality itself — the flow of time — churned around him like angry water. Pounding and pulsing.

This was the source.

_He _was the source.

"**Malak."**

"Hassan." A smooth baritone voice. Uninflected. There was nothing familiar about it, but the swordsman recognized it instantly.

The swordsman barely remembered what it was to feel, but the single word hammered through his existence as though it were the ringing toll of the Evening Bell itself. Had the swordsman a physical form, it would have wavered, like a reflection in choppy water. This was a being he had met. A being he was familiar with. A being he had collaborated with. A kindred spirit, if something that had once been a man and one of Allah's messengers could be said to be such.

"I'm glad you're here, actually," the Angel of Death made flesh said, and an unfamiliar wistfulness filled the voice. The swordsman had never heard it anything but icy. "This world can be redemptive for more than just myself."

"**I do not require redemption." **It was true, but the fact that _this_ Messenger of all of them would say something like that introduced an element of doubt that the swordsman thought he had cleanly excised millennia ago.

What he said was mostly true.

He did not require what he could not have.

"Don't you?" The figure had yet to move. "In all your years, old friend, how many are dead by your hand?"

"**Countless. You do not need my accounting to know this. You also know that every man either of us has killed was by Allah's will."**

"All of them?"

"**Yes."**

Something tickled the swordsman's resolve again, but he did not waver.

"Interesting." The figure's shoulders heaved in a heavy sigh. "Does that not seem monstrous to you? To kill so freely? To place the will of our God over the free will He so desired to instill in them?"

"**Free will does not preclude consequence." **

"No, it doesn't," Azrael conceded. "But vindictive violence is not natural consequence."

"**The people that we kill—"**

"Ah, you see, that's something you could never understand, is it?" The figure's voice was _haunted._ "You have watched the light leave a man's eyes, and known you have destroyed something unique. Something that will never come again." Its shoulders shook. "This is a price you can pay. This is an evil you can bear. Have you ever done the same to humanity as a whole? Have you ever looked at a world and drained it dry? I think not."

"**You were created for a purpose, Azrael."**

"A purpose," Azrael spat. "That's all we are to Him. The form crafted to fit the function. He cares not for the lives we snuff out in His name. He cares not for the abominations we become in His honor. We are created monsters to do monstrous things so His hands remain clean."

"**I chose my path."**

The shoulders tightened, and each word was clipped and venomous. "_Not all of us had that luxury, Hassan-i-Sabbah." _The figure lifted its head, looking up at the altar. "I killed because I existed to kill because He needed a killer. I never knew there was any other way. I never understood that He had created something of truest, purest beauty, and asked us to kill that beauty at His pleasure."

"**A rot that takes hold in the root will spread to the branches in time,"** the swordsman replied. "**The rot must be cut away for the greater good."**

"A rot in the root," Azrael said heavily. "You are more right than you know." With another sigh, the Malak rose to his feet, almost as tall as the swordsman was. "But I can see you are as much a zealot as ever, Hassan-i-Sabbah. You will never be convinced that you are walking a cruel path." Azrael's hands flexed spasmodically; both the human hand, and what the swordsman could now see to be something encased in jagged carapace the same color as the robes. "I have discarded all other names. I have forsaken my titles. Now, I am only Abaddon. If I die, I go back to being what I was. I will not allow that to happen." He held his human hand out to his side, perpendicular, fingers splayed wide.

The candles in the room flickered and died, leaving them in darkness. Within that darkness, the shadows swirled, churning into black froth, rivulets flowing to Abaddon's open fingers. A simple scythe formed from that shadow, an ancient wooden haft fastened to a length of crudely hammered iron. The blade could not be called sharp. There was no slicing edge. But it would reap all the same.

Abaddon's fingers closed around the familiar wood, and the swordsman's vision doubled. For the space of a heartbeat, what he saw was not the priestly, mortal form of Abaddon's current incarnation. Instead, what stood before him was a hulking figure, covered in head to toe with that same white chitin that had encased his hand. Every joint was spiked, every edge sharp enough to cut. A crown of white horns encircled his head, and vast wings, larger than could physically fit in the small room, unfurled before him, somehow coexisting with the stone walls in a way that didn't make sense. The chill of death poured from the Malak's true form, stiffening even the old swordsman's inhuman muscles.

And then the moment passed, and all he could see was Abbadon's new mortal form. He turned, and the piercing blue eyes were the same as the swordsman remembered from his dealings with the Malak in the past. The face, far from being calm and collected, quivered with a rage deeper than the swordsman had ever seen in the expression of a mortal man about to die. Ancient white letters, as old as the swordsman himself, flared along the scythe's blade. Energy gathered in Abaddon's flesh, infusing his body. Burning white lines like tattoos hissed into being across Abaddon's skin.

"I will not return," he snarled.

"**You have lost your way,"** the swordsman said, and finally allowed himself to manifest. The fuse in his mind lit. The path had been chosen. The room was pitch black, but for the flickering blue light cast by his eyes and the dim white glow, but neither of them would have any trouble seeing the other. "**I will remind you of your duty, Abaddon." **The swordsman hefted his sword, flexed the fingers that lay behind his shield.

This was not a defiance of Allah's will. This was euthanasia.

This was why he was here.

With a roar of defiance, Abaddon pulled the scythe back, readying his opening salvo and—

Like static electricity—

Like all-consuming lightning—

Holy fire arced between Abaddon's fingers—

Sparkling and sputtering—

Every light went out.

Wild and uncontrolled Divine magic—

He'd drawn too much for the priest's mortal flesh to bear—

The power surged. The power crashed. And the power burst.

* * *

_I hope y'all are ready for the longest chapter so far two weeks from now. Shit Is Going Down. Thanks to everyone who is along for the ride! This ain't even the end of part 2._

_Next chapter: Fear The Reapers_


	28. Fear the Reapers

One moment, the church was there, and the next, it wasn't.

A wave of force raced out from the church grounds like ripples in a pond, churning dirt and cracking pavement with the violence of its passing. That in and of itself was enough to throw Shirou to the ground, sending him tumbling across mercifully soft snow and grass.

"_What the fuck-" _Rin started to shriek, somewhere just out of view, before her screams were well and truly drowned out.

A column of blinding white fire geysered up from the church grounds, several hundred feet high, accompanied by a literally deafening _**WHAM.**_ Huge chunks of rooftop and masonry launched into the air like ammunition from a line of ancient trebuchets.

"_Shit, shit, shit!" _Rin was yelling, and it was a wonder he could hear her at all with the horrible ringing in his ears. Dazed, he turned his head to see her lying in the middle of the road about a dozen feet away. Her face was a sheet of blood, and her hands shook as they danced in an intricate pattern.

Shirou had just enough time to think the word _spellwork_ before a canopy of red energy extended over the two of them in a half-bubble, sizzling and crackling imperfectly.

_WHAM WHAM WHAM._

_WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM-_

Flaming, half-molten lumps of stone slammed down on their impromptu barrier, fragmenting into shrapnel of its own. The curses had devolved into a desperate scream of rage. Heat, undeterred by the magic, blasted every inch of exposed skin. Any one of those projectiles would have been enough to crush Shirou like an ant, but Rin's barrier took all of it and kept ticking. Dust and smoke billowed until the boiling blackness was all Shirou could see, until his eyes burned and his lungs choked with

_the end of everything_

_even if he survives that will be true because what was before is gone_

_the family he had before is gone _

_the person he was before is gone_

_scoured burned cauterized_

_he learned this word just the day before, cauterized _

_he hadn't understood how badly such a thing would hurt_

_severed scorched blackened and cauterized_

_this is hell_

_what true hell could be worse than this_

_the vision of the future nothing but a waking dream_

_a vision before death_

_something comforting to slip away to_

_(a child should never have to have these thoughts, even he knows this)_

_his arm is broken and the pain will not let him sleep_

_to slip away would be an end to the pain but the pain will not end_

_it wont end it wont end it wont end it wont wont wont wont wont_

"—miya—"

_no strength in his limbs and no desire to move_

_his broken body trapped under rubble_

_let it end_

_the flames are close_

_it wont end let it end_

"—_ya—!"_

_even when it ends it will not end _

_it will not end because nothing never ends_

_once you've walked into hell it will follow you forever_

"_Shirou!"_

Sudden pain shocked him from wherever he'd been lost. His vision blurred and doubled, then resolved into Rin's face. Desperate and terrified. Bleeding from a nasty scrape on her forehead. _Head wounds bleed a lot_, he thought, dazedly. _She should cauterize it before it gets bad._

Oh, she'd slapped him. He should probably be angry about that, but he couldn't remember why. His body was shaking. She was talking, but none of the words sounded like words, as though she were a cassette running in reverse. He shook his head and groaned. His ears were ringing. High and piercing.

He forced himself to sit up. "Sorry," he said, and wondered if his voice was as shaky as it sounded in his own ears. "I'm back. What was… what was all that?"

"I said the goddamn church blew up!" Rin was yelling, and he could still barely hear her. "I need to know if you can come with me, or if I need to leave you here!"

The church. Right. He remembered that-

_inferno_

_-_but he didn't let himself remember it too clearly. Slowly, shakily, he raised his hand. The Command Spell was still burned in. "Assassin's still alive," he said, oddly relieved.

"So is Archer," Rin said impatiently, "but he wasn't inside the church when it happened, I don't think. Stand up. We need to go look for them." She waved a hand over his mouth, and as his lips began to tingle, she did the same to his eyes. "That should keep the worst of the dust out of your lungs and eyes. Don't breathe through your nose."

Shirou could instantly feel the difference. The air was so clogged with dust that visibility was almost nothing. His head cleared a little as something approaching fresh air filled his chest, and he forced himself to his feet. His legs shook, but they always did after one of those episodes. A little wobbliness didn't mean you could ignore your responsibilities.

Nausea pulsed high in his throat, and when he turned too quickly, the world seemed to lag behind his gaze. Pins and needles prickled across every inch of his skin, and he kept swatting at himself as though he were being swarmed by insects. The two of them hobbled toward where the gate had been. The heavy iron was twisted and bent, where it lay on the ground. "I think he's still…" Shirou gasped, but he couldn't make his brain come up with the word he was looking for. He wiggled his fingers vaguely. "Solid. I can feel him. Draining me."

Rin gave him a worried look, terror dancing at the corners of her eyes. "That's not good."

"No," Shirou agreed. "How long has it been since the church… blew up?"

"Two minutes, tops. I didn't black out, but I kinda…" she laughed derisively. "You know. I had to reboot."

"Makes sense," he said. They stood in the main yard, but the dust was so thick that searching the premises for Archer or Assassin would be difficult. "Can you do something about all this?"

"Yeah," she said. She sounded exhausted. "Make sure you're standing on something solid."

Shirou planted his feet and waited.

A moment later, an enormous gust of wind nearly knocked Shirou from his feet, but somehow, he managed to hold his ground. The dust poured away, and Shirou barely had time to see a few fires go out.

The scene that was left was

_the city was just gone. every inch of every surface was burned black or currently on fire. people sobbed and people cried and one by one, each voice went quiet._

"_is anyone still alive?" someone screams in the distance, but he doesn't know if he is, so he doesn't answer_

_the ruin of everything he knew—_

A sharp pain and the taste of blood as he bit down hard on his lip. He didn't have time for this. He couldn't afford to—

The church was an enormous pile of rubble, with four barely-there skeletal walls, surrounding a central pit filled with broken earth and hunks of stone. The explosion must have come from underground, but that wasn't what caught Shirou's attention.

Kirei Kotomine stood in the ruined church, at the epicenter of the blast. His robes were smeared with soot and ash, but they looked to have once been a pristine white; one of his arms was too big, almost like it was armored. The other held a scythe, like Shirou had seen a thousand times before in movies and comics in the hands of a black-robed skeleton.

His eyes were different. His eyes were _inhuman. _That blue was _not_ what they had been before, and there was _hatred _burning in them. Kirei had been a bastard, but… But had he so visibly _hated?_ Along his left cheek, like a perversion of a scab, four white, insectoid spikes protruded from his skin. Like the person that had been Kotomine was nothing but a suit of skin, stretched tight over something…

Something _else._

"It wasn't Zouken," Rin breathed, horrified. "It was you. The ritual was you."

Kotomine's face went blank as his eyes fastened on the two of them in turn, and the hatred cooled. It was a much more familiar expression on that face. "Rin. It is good to see you again." He took a single step forward.

Rin held up her hand, magic gathering at the tips of her fingers. "Stay back! I don't know what you are, but you're not getting any closer to either of us."

Kotomine tilted his head, then smiled widely. It was genuine, and that made it even more unnerving. "You always were remarkably headstrong. So unlike your father."

"Who are you?" Rin hissed.

Kotomine took another step. Something was wrong with him. Something was wrong with him. Something was wrong with him. He wasn't moving right. Shirou could not point to a single specific thing that was unnatural about the way the priest moved, but it was like looking into an optical illusion; one of those pictures that were just a meaningless scramble of shapes and colors until you crossed your eyes just the right way.

"Rin," Shirou whispered. "I don't think that's Kotomine anymore."

"That is not entirely correct," the priest-not-priest's voice intoned. The wooden end of the scythe thumped quietly on the ground with every step. "You're like a daughter to me, Rin. He did- _I _did care for you, in my own way. I do not relish the idea of killing you here and now. Do not give me reason to."

"Who are you?" She asked again.

"I am nothing more than a man who would like to live his life," the thing wearing Kotomine's face said simply. "A mortal life. I will not allow you to take that from me." Burning fire traced strange runes on the blade of the scythe. They hurt to look at. "You could not, regardless."

"_Who are you?"_ she asked a third time, and there was a strange sense of power and finality to the question.

"You may call me Abaddon," he said graciously, halting his agonizingly slow approach to take an unironic bow. "Though Kirei is part of me. You may continue to use that name if you wish."

"Go to hell," Rin snarled. "You're an abomination."

"Hell?" Abaddon smiled wistfully. "I was forged in those flames of perdition, child. Their agonies hold no power over me. The things I have done cannot be so easily punished." His voice took on the cadence of a prayer. "Hellfire cannot hold a candle to a world that is only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water."

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust," Rin whispered, as though this were the proper response.

"The dust of the worlds I have slain," Abaddon said. "All that remains of humanity in those doomed worlds. Wastelands all."

"You're hardly making a case that I shouldn't kill you," Rin said unsteadily.

"And I am telling you that you cannot." Abaddon took another step. His boot _crunch_ed on the broken rubble. "This is your final chance to remove yourself from my path."

Shirou limped over to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Rin. She looked at him with fear-tinged resolve, and he nodded firmly. They looked to Abaddon together.

"No," they said in unison.

The priest looked disappointed. "Very well," he said heavily, and lifted the glowing scythe. "May your souls be permitted their rest." The intent to kill poured off of him like something physical, a torrent of sickening water crashing against then. He lifted the scythe, and Shirou braced—

A black-gauntleted hand burst forth from the ground like the church's eruption in miniature, and amid the spray of dust and gravel, armored, pointed fingers wrapped tightly around Abaddon's ankle. The priest had just enough time to look surprised before the hand _yanked,_ sending him tumbling off balance — and in the same apparent motion, among a cloud of debris, a familiar suit of midnight armor dragged itself back into the light as though from the grave. The blue fire in Assassin's eyes was gone — what burned there was the color of fresh blood.

Shirou and Rin took involuntary steps back, and everything that happened next happened very quickly.

Abaddon's fall transitioned smoothly into a roll, breaking Assassin's grip, but the hulking Servant was already on his feet and swinging that black iron sword. It hit the rubble with a resounding _crash_ and another small spray of debris. Abaddon came up from his roll swinging, scythe arcing up as Assassin's sword swung again —

A hollow _boom_ as blue sparks and white fire mingled, deathly power unleashed by the force of the two weapons' collision. Assassin's eyes flashed, a blanket of needles rolled over every inch of Shirou's skin, and a column of blue flame erupted beneath Abaddon's feet, but in that barest blink of an eye before he should have been consumed, the false priest was already throwing himself backward.

And somehow—

Somehow, Assassin was now behind his opponent. It wasn't that Assassin had moved quickly — he hadn't moved at _all_. Here one instant, there the next. His sword was already mid-swing, and still, Abaddon deflected.

The sword's edge hit the thin wooden shaft of the scythe head on, and did not even scratch.

Shirou took a step back. Abaddon did not come after him.

Not tearing his eyes away from the fight for a heartbeat, Shirou nudged Rin, who seemed as absolutely dumbfounded as he did. "We need to find Archer. Is he still here?"

"He's close," Rin said, wide-eyed. "But what if-"

Every time the two weapons clashed, a thunderclap rang through the rubble. _The strength behind each of those—_

"I trust Assassin," Shirou said, and was almost surprised to realize that it was true. No harm would come to either of them as long as Assassin had the power to manifest.

So their survival was on Shirou. Cool.

As if on cue, another blast of sapphire flame roared through the empty space where Abaddon had been but a moment before. This time, the hook of the scythe's blade caught under one of the plates of Assassin's armor; but instead of taking damage (or perhaps _while_ taking damage), Assassin used the hitch in momentum to thrust at Abaddon's face.

Sparks flew, and Shirou realized moments later that Abaddon had _slapped the blade away_ with his monstrous arm, hitting the flat of the blade just hard enough to send Assassin's sword whistling through empty air. Abaddon leapt into the air, planted both feet on Assassin's chest, and kicked off. The plate came with him, but the chain underneath looked to be undamaged.

"I don't think I can run, Rin," he said quietly. His knees already shook; he was already on the point of collapse. What would happen when the pain came? "Assassin and I are making a stand. Find Archer." He grunted, his left foot going numb all at once. "Wake up him, if the lazy guy is sleeping. He can help carry me this time, so you don't have to. We'll need him later."

Rin's already-wide eyes widened, and she shook her head vigorously. "Absolutely not! If I let you die here, I'd… I'd be…"

"I always wished to take the measure of you," Abaddon said casually. He didn't sound like someone engaged in a furious battle to the death. "One of the best killers humanity had to offer."

"**I cannot say the same,"** Assassin replied, equally unconcerned with the exertion. "**We were on the same side, once. How far you have fallen."**

Shirou smiled a smile he didn't feel. A blast of heat washed over them both as Assassin unleashed more flame, and he wavered. "You'll dig faster without me in the way. Like I said. I trust him."

"Shirou—"

"Do it," he said quietly.

"I suppose that I should not be surprised you're too inflexible to consider the meaning of your actions." The flurry of blows intensified, the thunder reached a crescendo — and then it ebbed. The cacophony paused. "Free will is wasted on one such as you."

"We're not going to die here," she snarled, and whirled toward a specific pile of broken stone and dirt.

"We're not," Shirou said. He was breathing heavy now.

All he could do was watch.

Watch and hope.

Assassin planted the tip of his sword into the ground. "**You are not He," **he said with the weight of one who had not doubted in millennia, and who wasn't about to start now. "**You do not see all. You do not know all. One such as you or I cannot question His will."**

"I see enough," Abaddon said, and dark fury knit his brows together as he bared his teeth. "I see you. I see past the death, past that ridiculous armor, past the fire and the fury. All that vaunted willpower? That unshakeable faith? That peerless skill?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "It's a facade. But you know that, don't you?"

"**Do tell."**

"Would you care to know what I see, when I look into your soul?" Abaddon spat into the debris. "I see a _coward_. I see a frightened child, so _terrified _of the freedom he was gifted that he has dedicated his life to finding a way to abdicate all responsibility for his own actions. You cannot be blamed for anything, for you are but a tool. You can never make a mistake, because you are but a tool. You never have to second guess yourself, _because you are but a tool_. But all that is merely a bonus, is it not? Between you and me and our beloved Father? You have pursued a life where you will _never_ have to make a _choice_. And what are you so afraid of, Hassan-i-Sabbah?"

Assassin had gone unnaturally still. Only the burning flames in his eyes moved. "**You speak of things one such as you could never understand."**

"I was _born_ into slavery, Hassan!" A fevered intensity pulsed through his words. No more was he the respected preacher leading a quiet prayer, as he had been before; now, with every word he spewed fire and brimstone from his pulpit. "I was _born_ without choice! _I_ did not lay my own free will upon the sacrificial altar like a firstborn to be slaughtered. My eyes are opened! Had I but had the _choice-"_

"**Enough!"** Assassin roared, and the sound of it was more shocking than the church's death had been. The word echoed in the deafening silence. When he continued, his voice was calm. "**That is where your understanding fails, old friend." **Calm, but not uninflected. "**One who has never **_**had**_ **knows not the meaning of sacrifice.**" The was melancholy in the words. "**I have given my life to the service of something greater, because I believe so powerfully."** No, not melancholy. _Pity._ "**Perhaps that is the true flaw in your kind, Malak. You never had the chance to believe." **

Nausea bloomed in Shirou's throat and his stomach, and he couldn't catch his breath. His vision blurred for a moment, refocused, blurred again. He wouldn't be able to maintain this much longer.

Abaddon's halfway-hysterical laughter layered over itself into a hellish maelstrom. "Believe in a God that slaughters his children?"

"**To believe in them. To believe in humanity."**

As quickly as the snap of one's fingers, Abaddon's cackle turned to a feral snarl. "So blinded by your own self-righteousness that you cannot see what is right in front of your face. I _love_ humanity. That is why I want no part in their deaths! That is why I lament the choice that was taken from me!"

"**A rot in the root-"**

"Spare me the rhetoric, O Most Holy Butcher," Abaddon said, his voice now a dangerous drone, and spread his arms wide. In that moment, he _was_ Kirei, and no one else. "You have yet to answer my question. What are you so afraid of?"

"**I fear nothing." **Assassin's eyes flashed, and burning fire raced down the length of his blade.

An ice pick drove itself into Shirou's brain, just above his right eye. He grunted, clapping a hand to the site of the pain; though his knees buckled, he did not fall. "Hurry it up," he mumbled, but neither of them seemed to hear him.

"All that fear, and still, you failed, Hassan." The white light flared and redoubled, tattoos and runes burning bright as the sun. "Abdication _is_ a choice. You are complicit in every atrocity you took part in. What are you so afraid of?"

"**Salvation is not always pleasant, Malak ul-Maut." **_CRASH CRASHCRASH. _Shirou hadn't seen either of them close the distance, but their weapons impacted again and again and again, and as though his voice were but a recorded message, Assassin continued to speak. "**The world will not become a fair place because you wish it were so."**

Another wild laugh. "And who bears the blame for that?" The white light exploded outward again, scouring away the shadows and actually forcing Assassin back a step. With a roar, Abaddon swept the scythe's blade upward as he lunged. "_What are you so afraid of?" _

"I've got Archer," Rin yelled desperately somewhere behind him. "But he's unconscious, and he's stuck under a lot! I don't know if I can move him!"

Shirou didn't answer, nor did he see if Assassin had reacted to the provocation, because he was too busy vomiting onto the unforgiving ground. His stomach clenched and pain like railroad spikes slammed into his head, again and again. The pain built and built and built and _BUILT—_

Until something gave.

Like popping a stitch.

A feeling of release, of something breaking, but not an end to the pain.

"Shirou!"

Gasping for breath, he looked up once more, a string of drool dangling from his lower lip. Assassin was-

Assassin was…

Assassin was flickering. In and out. Solid to translucent to solid again. His stance was as strong as ever, but—

"So in the end, you were not the weak link," Abaddon said, disappointed, "but your Master. A shame. I had hoped to show you the error of your ways before this was over."

Assassin grunted, took an uncharacteristically heavy step forward, then staggered, swaying dangerously, before falling to one knee. He gripped the hilt of his sword as though it were the only thing keeping him halfway-vertical.

"Have you ever failed before, Hassan?" Abaddon asked slowly, as though he were savoring the moment. "No, that is the wrong question, for you are a failure as a human being, and were long before you became… _this." _He looked down at Assassin, lip curling in disgust. "Have you ever been unable to perform a duty that you were given? Has one of your marks ever slipped away? Have you ever had to watch one you were meant to protect bleeding their lives away in the dirt?"

Assassin didn't answer. He tried to stand, and could not.

Abaddon smiled. "Let's see how you enjoy the feeling."

"Shirou!" Rin was at his back, and he didn't know when she'd gotten there. Her arms were curled around him, under his armpits, and she was trying to drag him away. Deja vu overwhelmed him like a bluescreen on a computer monitor.

Abaddon looked their way. "I think not," he said quietly, and waved his armored hand. Rin yelled and time wavered and skipped and he was lying on the ground and Rin was on her knees at his side looking down at the ground while Abaddon was was he was suddenly much closer than he was before and-

_skip _

Abaddon stood over them, blackened robes and a now-dim scythe silhouetted against a distant, cloudy sky. "I offered you a chance to live," he said regretfully, but he was smiling as he said it. "I had hoped it would not come to this." Gently, like a lover's caress, he dragged the tip of the scythe across Shirou's cheek. Pain bloomed as blood ran down his cheek, but worse than that, there was a _deadening_ all down the shallow cut. As if the blade's proximity were enough to start his flesh rotting. He grunted and tried to pull away, but he was utterly paralyzed. "I am weary of the killing, but I admit, when it is a choice, there is a texture to it that I had never appreciated before." There was nothing left he could do. No more tricks to pull. Even if he could order Assassin to do something, it wouldn't help. He had nothing left to give.

The back of Shirou's neck prickled.

Rin forced her head up, her muscles straining against some binding or spell that Shirou couldn't see. She didn't look at Abaddon, however; rather, she looked up to the clouds. "Enemy of my enemy?" she whispered nonsensically. Shirou didn't have the strength left to ask her what she meant.

Abaddon bent his head and murmured what sounded like a prayer, but Shirou could no longer make out the words, so for all he knew, Abaddon was laying a curse on their souls before sending them to hell.

Rin's eyes flicked to him, but there was no longer despair in her eyes. Was that… was that hope he saw there?

He couldn't imagine such a thing.

_Don't give me hope, _he thought, and even his thoughts were slurred. _I can't be disappointed if you don't-_

The world came to a halt.

Shirou had heard once that the moment of your death stretched out into infinity as your brain kicked into overdrive trying to avert its fate, but he didn't think that's what this was. For one thing, he could still move his eyes, which didn't make sense if this was just his one last moment. Dust blew through the air about ten feet away, but any closer than that… there was a clearly definite circle surrounding them, inside of which nothing moved. Everything hung suspended.

It was as if a sphere of reality had been solidified, encased in invisible glue. Abaddon grunted, and unlike Shirou or Rin, he moved — slowly, though, like trying to push through thick mud. His face twitched, and he lifted the scythe, but his eyes were not on Shirou any longer—

Three figures that could only be described as mostly-headless-skeletons carrying jagged swords leapt over Shirou's prone form, unaffected by whatever magecraft had trapped them all, and tackled Abaddon. He did not fall, but he did stumble backwards, slowly, white light building again in lines on his face and in the scythe. His face was a twisted mask of murderous rage.

The three skeletons plunged their weapons into him, again and again, but he didn't fall. He didn't even bleed. He roared, and light flashed again, and everything began moving again, fast enough that his overtaxed brain could only _try _to make sense of it. The scythe's blade tore the air, and when it carved through one of the skeletons, the construct fell to pieces, its animating magic dissipated. It would only be seconds before—

From a single point between Abaddon and the two of them, a black dot appeared in the air. A pulse of magic sent the world shuddering, and then another, in perfect time with the black sphere's distortion, and it seemed to be drawing all the light and mana in the air into it, like some kind of black hole. In moments it grew and shaped and resolved into an empty, familiar purple cloak, and as Shirou's vision wavered again it began to fill, as though the cloak were a container that someone was pouring sand into. Legs, torso, two slender arms—

And finally, a cruel smile under an oversized hood.

Of all the people in the world who could have interfered, Caster stood over them, gloved hands clasped before her as though she were delighted to receive an unexpected gift. "Welcome to my debt, children," she said coldly, then knelt, placing a hand on each of their chests, and as Abaddon loomed, bringing down the scythe—

The world twisted—

The world compressed—

The world darkened—

Everything he was compacted into a single point, a single dimension, every cell and every impulse and every memory, and at the moment that he would be annihilated—-

He blacked out.

* * *

Caster was not gracious enough to teleport them to ground level.

Rather, Rin and what looked to be Shirou's unconscious body materialized about three feet off the ground, and before she even had time to finish squawking like a startled idiot, they'd already crashed painfully to Earth. Stars swirled before her eyes, and she groaned, back arching against the grass as her whole body seized. _At least she didn't drop us on concrete, _she thought in a daze.

As her vision cleared, she finally noticed Caster standing over her, smiling in amusement. In contrast to Rin's dirty, tattered form, the Servant was immaculate, as though she had been carved from painted marble.

The enormity of what had just happened landed on Rin all at once, like an anvil onto a cartoon character's head. She'd asked Caster for help, and Caster had obliged. _Welcome to my debt, children. _She shuddered. It had been the only option; Abaddon had been about to slaughter them both, and she'd rolled the dice on one last, desperate gamble.

She wasn't sure if it had paid off, or if they'd just gone from the frying pan to the fire.

"Archer," she gasped, realization hitting her again. "Is he-"

"He's still there," Caster said dismissively. "I am not omnipotent, girl. Time was short."

"Show me him," Rin demanded, forcing her shaking body to sit up. She was exhausted and hurt, fueled by sheer stubbornness and refusal to give in. "I know you can do that, at least. Show him to me."

Caster chuckled softly. "I like your fire, girl." A casual wave of her hand, and the air shimmered. As though viewed through heat distortion, she saw Archer half-buried in his pile of rubble, face bloody once again. He was unconscious and trapped, but not so badly hurt as he had been after fighting Berserker. Not unless—

A shadow fell over him. No, not a shadow— a distortion. A place where the spell broke down, a mass of static and artifacting shaped into a rough approximation of a human. A high whine of feedback came from the image; but she could not hear anything from the scene itself.

"Save him," Rin said breathlessly. "Please."

"As much as I enjoy your begging," Caster sighed. "I'm afraid I have played my hand. He will not be taken by surprise again. There is nothing more I can do without—"

"Then screw you, bitch," Rin growled, thrusting an unsteady hand out toward the scrying. "_Archer_," she hissed, pouring as much power and will as she could into the words, "_return to me."_ Archer blinked out of existence on the screen and materialized in a heap, crumpled on the ground between her and Shirou. Red light flashed, accompanied by a sharp pain on the back of her hand, and her second Command Seal faded away. It was a heavy price to pay, but more than worth the cost. Given the choice between burning a Seal and losing her Servant altogether… Well. It wasn't really a choice. Still, it stung.

"What about Assassin?" She asked finally. If he was dead, there was nothing she could—

"Dematerialized the moment I appeared," Caster said, stroking her smooth, pale chin. The scrying faded from the air. "A fascinating individual. Too powerful for either of you to handle, of course, but fascinating nonetheless."

Rin coughed out a laugh. "Yeah, well. We're working on it."

"I have no doubt that you are. Now, I'm sure you're dying to ask me something. Go ahead." She seemed to lean forward out of her billowing cloak, but Rin couldn't have been entirely sure that's what she was seeing. There was too much interference from her exhausted body, her beaten-to-hell-and-back brain, and the generally unnecessary flowy-ness of Casters robes.

"Why?" Rin asked simply. Every word felt like she was moving tons of bricks. She was just so _tired_. "Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to let us die?"

Caster's pretty lips twisted into a (still fairly pretty) grimace. "In any other situation, I would have let the both of you perish in a heartbeat. Do not mistake pragmatism for sympathy, girl." She looked down at herself, and her gloved hand brushed a thin smear of dust from the cloak with an almost absent-minded flick of her wrist. "This abomination stands between me and the Holy Grail. I do not believe you to be capable of killing it, but you can, perhaps, distract it. Through observation, I may be able to learn something of its weaknesses. We are not allies."

"I would never ally with you," Rin said, feeling defensiveness creep into her voice. A dangerous move to speak as such to someone who so effortlessly held their lives in her hand. "Never."

The grimace became a smirk, and Rin's heart thudded nervously. "I have not discarded the potential you could unlock beneath me, girl. That is a conversation we will return to, once this business is concluded."

Rin swallowed, her throat dry. "Then-"

Caster waved a dismissive hand. "I will not use this debt to compel you to surrender the Grail to me. I believe even _you_ would break that vow, if I handed you that ultimatum, and—"

"There'd be no fun in it," Rin finished. She couldn't deny the relief she felt at Caster's understanding. Caster wouldn't ask Rin to completely abandon her goals—her morals and her drive—for a favor.

Rin respected that.

Caster gazed down at her for a long few moments, before her smile became something slightly more genuine. "I'm glad you understand me so well." Slowly, she lowered her hood. The woman who looked down at Rin was… well, she was beautiful. There wasn't really another word that fit as well. There was a strange softness to her features that was belied by the steel in her eyes, as though her cruelty were something learned. Two adorable pointy ears poked out from under the curtain of lavender hair, and Rin was filled with a disturbing urge to stand up and touch them. Rin was almost completely sure that doing that was the worst possible idea she'd had in a good long while, and that included this whole stupid attack on the church. "Our business isn't concluded, girl. I will offer you a second time. Become my apprentice. A willing student is much easier to teach than one that resists. Power such as you would never know could be yours."

It was a much better pitch than the last one Rin had gotten, and a part of her wanted to say yes out of sheer curiosity (and absolutely nothing else), but in her heart of hearts she knew what that would do to her. "The whole S&M thing doesn't really appeal to me," she said lightly, trying very hard to hide her intrigue and discomfort. "A little too kinky for my blood."

Caster's face darkened, the sweetness of her smile hardening into a flat line, and were it not for the cruelty in the set of her lips and the corners of her eyes, Rin would almost have described it as a pout. How almost-cute. "You will not deny me a third time," she said, a note of danger in her voice.

"You're not nearly so scary after almost getting my head cut off by a literal angel, sweetheart," Rin replied, leaning into the danger now that she'd fought with an ancient Divine Spirit wearing a Kirei-suit. "You're gonna have to work on it."

Her motions clipped enough to hide embarrassment, Caster pulled the hood back over her eyes. It was a sexy look (in a scary kind of way), but it had to require magical investment to see out of. Well, Caster had style, if nothing else. She was committed to the scary goth-witch look. "We are roughly a mile from the boy's home. I have taken care that Abaddon will not be able to trace the transport spell, so I have bought you a reprieve. What you do from here is up to you. Try to make things hard for him."

* * *

The bloodlust fades, and I am left hollow.

It is something I am unfamiliar with, and I do not relish it.

The intruders are gone. The church, behind me, is gone. I can feel that Cu Chulainn still draws breath; if he is alive, then my untrustworthy ally Medb is likely alive too. That is good.

I do not know what I would do without them.

I am surrounded by rubble. Piles of broken stone and dirt. Shattered glass. The remnants of my first abortive attempt to gather my power. I can feel the affinity between the mortal and the Divine growing, but I reached for too much, too fast. Intellectually, I should have known my limitations. Even as I did it, I could feel the overload coming, the way electricity makes one's hair stand on end.

I should have known, and I did it anyway. A refrain of the last fifteen minutes or so. I should have known, and I did it anyway.

From the moment Assassin—

From the moment Hassan-i-Sabbah—

From the moment he entered my awareness, I was no longer in control. My mind went black with rage, and my body trembled with the force of my wrath. He wished to send me back, and as I told him, I _would not go back._ My life has only just begun, and his objective was to snuff it out. I wanted to survive. (I had never particularly cared, one way or another.) I feared death. (I could not die, and so, had nothing to fear.)

I bend down and run my mortal hand over the stone under which Archer had lain but a moment before. The jagged edge cuts my hand. I bleed red.

I have never bled before. (I have bled countless times before.)

I contemplate the blood. It is bright against the ashy, dusty skin. A trickle of life against the pallor of death. The scythe falls from my other hand, and vanishes before it hits the ground. I have no more need of it at the moment.

More than all of that. More than the fear. More than the drive to live.

I have never been angry before. Not like this.

Not Kirei, and not Azrael. Nothing was ever truly personal to either of them. The burning rage is unfamiliar; perhaps another artifact of a Divine existence made mortal; a sign of the person Azrael might have been had he been born human. Or maybe Kirei did feel this anger, and my inability to regulate my emotional state makes it so overwhelming. The reason does not particularly matter, because the anger is not what scares me.

What scares me is the _joy._ The rapturous _joy_ of combat, of the thrill of battle, of the prospect of drawing blood that was not one's own. I relished it. I delighted in it. When I had the children in my grasp, the anticipation was delicious.

And now that they are gone, bloodlust left unsated, I hunger for it.

I hunger for violence.

No. The violence is a means to an end.

I hunger for their pain.

I know which of them this comes from.

Azrael never took pleasure in his grim duty, but Kirei did. Kirei fought, and Kirei killed, and Kirei tortured. He smiled when he drew blood and laughed when despair took his victims. My memories are still fragmented, but I remember enough.

I remember enough.

_Ryuunosuke Uryuu had been crucified._

_He hung from the walls of his sanctum, Black Keys driven through his wrists and his ankles, pounded deep into one of the stone columns. The steady _drip, drip, drip _of blood marked the moments he had remaining._

_His Servant, the unhinged Caster, was dead. Killed by Tokiomi's Gilgamesh in return for a Command Seal. The hunt had been rigged from the start, and none of the rest had ever stood a chance. Maybe together, they could have, but scattered as they were, they could not stop Caster's monstrosity before it reached the shore. _

_Kirei Kotomine was not supposed to leave the church. Not since his own Lancer had been killed in battle. Even without such a familiar, he was too valuable to risk, or so Tokiomi and Risei told him. Kirei was not a child, however, and he had questions that needed answering. Uryuu would not have the answers, twisted and broken as he was, but he might offer some kind of clue._

_Charred remains littered the cavernous space. Charcoal and old burnt meat in the air. One of the other Servants had destroyed this place, destroyed the monstrous art that the pair had created from torn flesh and dry blood, and Uryuu had still had the poor sense to return here once Caster was dead. _

_Kirei had been waiting._

_Uryuu groaned with pain, and Kirei laced his fingers together behind his back. "Was it worth it?"_

_The Master — barely more than a boy, it seemed — lifted his head, but it was a struggle, and his eyes were unfocused. "Was what worth it?" His voice was thick, slurred with blood loss._

_Kirei's lip twitched in disgust. "The killing. The sacrilege. The debauchery. Was it worth this end?" This had to be disgust. That was the only thing that made sense._

_The distant, pale face twisted into a tired smile. His arms trembled, but there was nowhere for them to go. "Sacrilege? Is that what you think all this is?" And then the fool had the gall to start laughing._

_A grimace touched Kirei's expression, and in an instant, one of the Black Keys was pressed to Uryuu's throat, just hard enough to draw blood. A pang of pleasure crawled across his skin like a spider, and he tried to ignore it. "Explain yourself. If not sacrilege, then—"_

"_I saw God today," Uryuu whispered, his laughter stilling. "I saw Him in that orgy of blood. In the big guy's last gift. Were you there, Father? Did you see Him?" Kirei had heard that note of tenuous fanaticism before. This man, as twisted as he was, was a zealot. His glassy eyes gleamed._

"_I saw nothing but a fool lashing out at the world," Kirei said. His voice was firm, but the question still remained. There was a tension to his own voice he didn't understand. _

"_Then you didn't look hard enough," the boy said. He broke into a heavy cough that turned into a strangled half-sob as the pain worsened with the convulsions. "The beauty… Couldn't you see how pretty it was? The screams of terror, and the blood, and the guts, and the killing?" His chin fell to his chest; he no longer had the strength to hold it up. His breath was haggard. "The way the blood swirls on the pavement… when the hope leaves a little kid's eye… That's not…" A trickle of blood ran from his lips to patter on the ground. "How could that ever be an accident? That's the most beautiful thing in the world, don't you think?"_

_Kirei's fist tightened on the Black Key. Something strained in his arm. The feeling of a revelation he did not want._

_No, to call it a revelation implied true ignorance. His ignorance was willful._

_One last time, Uryuu raised his shaking head. "God made it beautiful, Father. That's what people don't want to admit, and it's what I'm trying to show them. Everything they say is horrible is just so…" Tears filled his eyes, and Kirei did not think they were from the pain. His voice broke. "...Just so breathtaking. The world is so wonderful, and they don't want to see it." The tears spilled over, carving rivulets through the blood on his face. "But I can see it in your eyes, Father. You're like me. You can see it. You can see everything, just the way God wanted us to. Can't you—"_

_Kirei cut his throat without a word._

_It was an act of denial, but Uryuu was right. _

_He died beautifully._

That was the kind of person he was.

And therefore, that is the kind of person I am.

Two monsters made one flesh, seeking redemption that will forever be out of reach. Abaddon on one side, Kirei on the other. Me in the middle. Two sets of eyes I dare not meet in dreams.

Medb's voice reaches my ears, snapping me from his reverie. Anger twists it into something hateful. "Did we lose?" She is not even pretending to disguise the hatred in her voice. She is not a woman who takes loss well.

The three of us are alive. That should be a victory. They tried to kill us with everything they had, and only got away because I did not expect Caster to interfere. A misreading of her character, I see now. Pragmatic enough to work with others. I will be prepared for this in the future.

But what have I lost in the process?

The church's loss is meaningless. Even to Kirei, it held no special meaning.

Maybe I lost only my self-delusions. I knew the kind of people I used to be, and I thought that wanting to be different was enough. I thought I could be different without needing to try. I thought that righteous intentions were enough.

That was a lie.

The bloodlust is a part of me. The joy of inflicting misery. I lost control. Will I lose control again?

Am I in control now?

Is this what the free will I was so enamoured of is?

Is free will free if we cannot break from who we are?

I don't respond for a long time. I do not look at her.

The sound of rustling fabric on skin behind me. A quiet sigh that I cannot read. She puts her hand on my forearm. The touch is warm.

It is calculated, but it is also warm.

"I need to think," I say. My voice is choked. "I need to think."

All I can picture is my blade on that boy's throat. The anticipation of seeing his life pour from him while he gasped and tried to hold his wounds closed. This is who I am. This is my existence.

This is me.

I called myself Abaddon, because I thought it felt right.

Is that who I am?

Does it matter who I think I am if I am Kirei Kotomine when it counts?

Existing is not enough, not when it means this.

I will not go back, but I have a life, and I have the free will I did not have before. I have to tell myself this, because I can feel the despair biting at my heels, clawing at my periphery. I have free will. I can choose. I can choose.

I cannot escape this war. I was willing to let it end. I was willing to believe that if I did not cast the first stone, that the boy would live and let live. I was wrong. They came for me, and they will come for me again until I am dead. It will not stop until they are dead. It will not stop until I am the only one left standing.

I do not want to kill, but I choose to live.

And if I live? If I succeed?

What then?

The Holy Grail is omnipotent, or so they say.

To claim it will be evil. _The hope only of empty men. _To use it will be evil.

I am already evil.

But if it is in my hand—

I want to do good.

I _want_ to do good.

I want to _be_ good, but that is out of reach. I am beginning to understand that about myself.

But if survival leads to the Grail…

If all roads lead to Angra Mainyu.

Can good come from evil?

If I laid my hands upon the cup and wished the right wish… What could I do?

Who could I save?

"I need to think," I whisper again.

My voice cracks.

* * *

_Next chapter: Winter Chestnut, Spring Blossom_


	29. Winter Chestnut, Spring Blossom

NOTE: I'm sorry this is so late in the day! It's finals week and I am burdened with PAPERS and STRESS and honestly I just straight up forgot what week it was. Also some medication-related horseshit I won't burden y'all with. It's been a rough week, but the chapter is here now!

As usual for chapters featuring our girl Sakura, content warning for touching on dark shit. Nothing explicit, but she dances around some of the Real Bad Shit.

* * *

_The Einzbern castle, nestled in the forests of Germany, was lonely, but Illya had never known it to be an empty place. It was where she lived. It was where her mama lived, and she loved her mama more than anything else in the world. Except maybe her daddy, and he'd been spending a lot more time at home than usual lately. It wasn't fair to choose one over the other. Not when she loved them both so much. Her home was warm, even during the winter, and their little family filled it with all the love the rest of the Einzberns seemed to lack._

_Daddy had spent so much time playing with her lately, and she couldn't be happier, even if he was a cheater when they played games sometimes. Even a little girl like her knew that wasn't proper behavior for a role model. She couldn't be too upset for long, though, because lately, whenever he thought she wasn't looking, he would frown, and his forehead would wrinkle, and Illya was pretty sure that meant something was making him very sad. That made Illya sad too, but she loved her daddy, so she gave him her biggest smile and squeezed his legs in a hug so tight that she worried she might hurt him. He always laughed and rubbed her head, and sometimes he even picked her up to swing her around or plop her onto his shoulders. _

_Her mama wasn't as good at hiding it. For the last few weeks, she'd smiled just as much as she always did (her mama had a beautiful smile), but just like with daddy, there was always something sad about it. Illya wondered what was making them so uncomfortable, and she hoped it wasn't her. She trusted them, though. They'd tell her if she was. She was a good girl, even if she did get in trouble sometimes. _

_It was the day that mama and daddy were going to leave on a little trip, leaving her with their servants. Daddy did this kind of thing a lot, but mama never had before, and Illya was worried about being all by herself, but she was very mature for her age, she thought, so she'd be okay. Besides, daddy's trips were never too long, and he was always so happy to see her when he came back. That first hug when he walked through the doors almost made him being gone worth it._

_There was a stranger in the house. She knew he was there, because her parents had started talking about "their friend", like Illya wouldn't be able to understand there was another person somewhere if they didn't use a name. But for almost a week, Illya saw neither hide nor hair of their mysterious guest. She wanted to meet him, but when she asked daddy, he'd ruffled her hair and changed the subject. She pretended not to notice._

_In all the vast castle, there were many rooms she had never been in. Sometimes, when she was sad or bored, she would explore these unknown places, to see what sort of interesting things she could find. Sometimes there were empty rooms; other times the walls were stacked high with treasure. Once, she had found a room buzzing with so much magical energy that her hair had literally stood on end for the rest of the day, and she had blushed and looked away and been too embarrassed to even make up an excuse when mama had asked her about it._

_In one of those rooms, on the day mama and daddy were to leave, she met the man in the black armor. He sat cross legged in the center of a barren stone room, a crimson magical circle inscribed in the ground beneath him. Illya approached, thinking that the armor was empty, that this was nothing but another of the strange, exotic artifacts her family collected, when—_

_Blue flame kindled to life in the skull-helmet's eye sockets._

_Was it a helmet, or was that just his skull, on the outside?_

_Strangely, Illya felt no fear._

"_Are you a person?" she asked. This seemed the logical question._

_The voice that boomed forth from the armor was deep and completely uninflected. _"_**I am an Assassin." **__Her teeth rattled with the force of it, but she drew closer regardless._

"_Like…" She furrowed her brow. "The kind that kills people?"_

"_**The very same."**_ _Monotone, but not monotonous. The voice was fascinating._

"_Are you friends with my mom and dad?" Illya asked, standing just outside the circle. Part of her knew she should be afraid, but she felt no sense of danger. _

"_**I serve Kiritsugu Emiya and Irisviel von Einzbern,"**_ _the armor said. _

_What did her parents need with an assassin? Her furrow became a frown. "Well, I'm Illya." She crossed her arms over her chest and tried not to pout. "It's polite to tell a lady your name when she introduces herself."_

_The armor was silent for a moment. _"_**Assassin is enough."**_

_Illya heaved a heavy sigh. Clearly nobody had taught this strange man any manners, because Assassin obviously wasn't his real name. "Okay, well. It's nice to meet you, Assassin."_

_The man in the armor was silent._

_As cool as the armor looked, Illya was quickly growing bored. He wasn't exactly giving her a lot to work with. "Are you going on the trip with mama and daddy?"_

_The skull-helmet tilted a few degrees to the left, like a curious dog. _"_**Yes."**_

_That was very odd, but Illya didn't have enough information to know why it was odd. Where were they going, and why did they need such a weird, boring guy to go with them? "Where are you going?" she asked quietly._

"_**I have been asked not to reveal that information," **__Assassin said._

_Nothing made her dig her heels in like being told 'no,' but something about those words sparked something unpleasant within her that all the rest of her parents' weird behavior had not. "Where are you going?" She asked a little more forcefully, balling her little hands into fists._

_The black armor did not respond._

_She planted her feet. "Where are you—"_

_Her plaintive yell was cut short as a familiar heavy hand fell gently on her shoulder. "Hey, chestnut," her daddy said. Even without seeing him, she could hear the love in his voice._

_All the fight went out of her._

_She turned to find him kneeling behind her, that sad puppy dog look heavy in his eyes. Her lip trembled, and she threw her arms around him, pressing her face into his big barrel chest. He held her back, not saying a word._

"_Where are you going?" she whispered._

"_Japan," he said, but the word carried with it a weight that seemed too heavy to bear. "Have you seen your mother today?"_

_She shook her head, face still mushed against him._

_The rough, callused hand stroked her hair. "You should go give her a big hug, chestnut. She's been looking for you. She misses you already."_

Then she shouldn't go, _she thought, but she just nodded obediently. "Okay."_

_The stroking turned into a playful ruffle, and she grumbled. She hated when he did that, but not enough to tell him not to. "I love you."_

_Illya didn't have the words to say how much she loved her daddy or to express why she was so worried, so she didn't say anything as she left, her hands shaking and her eyes wide. She didn't know what was wrong, but it had hit her all at once that something was __**very**_ _wrong, and she couldn't stop the thought swirling swirling swirling around her head that whatever it was, it was too late for her to—_

_Her father spoke again before she was completely out of earshot, and his voice was not directed at her. It was cold and hard in a way she'd never heard her daddy before._

"_Maiya called. It's time."_

* * *

The presence Illya felt in Shirou Emiya's house was the same. There was no doubt. She'd seen a glimpse of the Servant in black armor the night of their battle, but she hadn't wanted to let herself consider the idea that the two might be the same. Many Heroic Spirits over the years had worn black armor, she was sure. Even Assassins, probably.

But now, she knew she couldn't deny what she'd been trying to avoid.

Shirou had not only inherited her father's love, but his Servant as well.

And even if it was faint, barely there, Illya could feel the unmistakable presence of her mother. She didn't know why or how, but her mother was still very much in this house. With _him_ and not with her.

Things that should have been hers. _Shirou_ had gotten everything that mattered, and she'd been left in her gilded cage.

(It was where she wanted to be. She was as comfortable as she could be, given the circumstances. But it was the principle of the thing. She'd have preferred her father at her back. She would have preferred the warmth of her mother's love, even if she wasn't around to give it.)

(They told her he was dead of natural causes. When Kiritsugu Emiya had left _her_ all alone, he had _chosen_ to leave. If he had stayed with her until his natural death, that would have been a parting she could understand.)

The house in which she now took refuge didn't look like something the father she'd known would have picked. It didn't feel the way it would have felt, or smell the way he would have smelled. But she could feel him. She could feel him in the floorboards and in the air and in the pillow under her head. This had been his home. For a time, she knew, this had also been her mother's home, but her essence was much less… palpable than her father's.

(He'd given up one home and gotten one he loved more.)

The door opened again and broke her out of her moping. For the moment.

The Makiri girl peeked around the corner, soft purple eyes nervous, as though she expected Illya to blast her with a curse the moment she showed her face again. (Illya had considered it, but it really would have broken the laws of hospitality just a bit too much to make her feel good about it. She was a Magus and a Master, but she was also a lady.) She carried a pair of steaming mugs in her hands, and she lifted one of them in a silent, wary peace offering.

Illya sighed. If her body hadn't felt so weak, she'd have been gone by now. But after that backlash, magical energy still buzzed through her like static, fuzzing her out every few minutes like a television with a bad connection. She was fairly sure the Makiri girl was too cowardly to make a move to hurt her, and besides, Berserker was just outside. She could feel him, now that her groggy haze had begun to clear. Not being able to immediately sense him had been her first panic, but now that she knew he was there, she relaxed, even if it was just the tiniest bit.

"I brought you some hot chocolate," she said warmly, and Illya wondered how much of that was a veneer, hiding… something else. "I didn't know if you liked tea or not, but I figured—"

"I like tea," Illya said, but quickly added, "But I like hot chocolate too."

The Makiri girl's face had started to fall the instant Illya said she liked tea. How sensitive. How... unexpectedly sensitive.

"O-okay," Sakura mumbled, and drew near, pressing one of the hot mugs into Illya's chilly hands before withdrawing to that same chair she'd planted herself in earlier. She was determined to play nursemaid, even though Illya was in no immediate danger. Illya didn't know how to feel about that.

"How are you feeling?"

Illya found herself staring again. The Makiri girl wore a pink and shapeless shirt over a long tan skirt, and, strangely, a heavy scarf. It wasn't cold enough for that inside the house, and Illya kept noticing the way Sakura fidgeted with it and tugged on it when she was nervous. The way she winced every time she turned her head. Was she hurt under there? _Did Berserker do it?_ she wondered for a brief moment, before coming to the conclusion that if Berserker had been involved, Sakura would be a smear on the ground somewhere outside.

Some part of her was a little bit glad that Sakura _wasn't_ a puddle of gore in the dirt. On a completely surface level, she found herself wanting to like Sakura. She had been nothing but warm and sweet and caring in the hour or so that Illya had known her, and she _had_ brought Illya in from the cold apparently out of the goodness of her heart, and yet…

There was something… something _different_, something _wrong_ about Sakura, and Illya just… couldn't figure it out. There was a humming deep in her own bones, a kind of resonance, like a singing crystal placed side by side with a wine glass, but there was something sick about it. Something rotten and slimy and twisting and writhing. At first, it had been like the sheen of oil on water, but the longer she was around the girl, feeling Sakura's aura was like immersing herself in spiders.

But there was something beautiful, too. Something brimming with potential and benevolent power and familiar. It put Illya at ease in a way that she hadn't been since her early childhood. She couldn't place it anymore than she could the darkness.

Both coexisted and commingled.

None of it made any sense.

_Sakura_ didn't make any sense.

She was a contradiction.

Sakura began to shrink away from the intensity of her gaze, and Illya forced herself to smile. It felt weird and unnatural, but Sakura seemed to be a little less like she was going to cry. "I'm feeling much better, actually." Talking to Sakura was like holding her hand out to a beaten dog; it seemed to want to trust, but simply didn't have the capacity. She wondered when Sakura would bite. She wondered when she would have to put Sakura down. Part of her really, _really_ disliked that thought.

Sakura looked down at the mug in her hands. The string of a teabag was draped over the lip. She was quiet for a moment, and seemed to be working up the courage to speak. They'd been avoiding the issue for this whole time. After that first, passionate outburst, Sakura had fled the room, and only been back in a few times to check on her semi-willing patient. (It was easier and smarter to just roll with it.) Each time she had brought some small gift; a new pillow, a washcloth, hot chocolate.

Illya was in no rush to talk about it, so she let Sakura build up to it. She took a sip of the chocolate and burned her tongue.

"What happened to you?" she asked, once Illya had stopped coughing. She didn't meet Illya's eyes. "Out there. I-it didn't seem like a fight, because you weren't hurt or anything, but..." She trailed off. The corner of her lip pulled back twice, the tic clearly involuntary, and then was still. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. "Did something happen last night?"

Illya didn't respond.

_Thy spirit shall be under my command, thy fate determined by thy sword. Thou who hath no will and no reason, answer my call._

_Grand Rider._

_Azrael._

She was trying so hard not to think about it, because every time she thought back to that ritual, to the feeling of power that had suffused the air, to Zouken Matou's words of summoning, her blood ran cold, and she started shivering. It was bad. It was really bad. What she'd seen—

She hadn't seen enough. She didn't know if it had worked or not, or if Zouken and Shinji had been killed by the same backlash that had torn her familiar apart and overloaded her own magical circuits. (Lancer and Rider, at least, were still alive. None of the Heroic Spirits had yet returned to her. The War was still in its early stages.) But if it _had _worked, then the game had just changed. Something monstrously powerful was _here_, and it was _involved_. Not just a second Rider. A _Grand_ Rider.

_The_ Grand Rider.

Sakura pulled the hot chocolate from Illya's shaking hands so she wouldn't spill it on herself. Illya barely noticed.

Servants were so far above normal humans in power that it just didn't compare; did an equally vast gulf separate a normal Servant from a Grand one?

She had an impulse she didn't understand, and she had been grappling with it since she'd awakened. She wanted to warn them. She wanted to tell them about this new danger, about what she knew.

Because she had an idea where this magic had come from.

She had an idea where Zouken had stolen it from.

To speak it aloud would be to betray her family. The Einzberns held onto their secrets with an iron fist, and even as one so important as she, it had been a nearly impossible task to find the family's hidden libraries, to uncover her family's secret studies in the field of Familiarity. Their experiments in the construction of Pseudoservants were all failures, but their research into Grand Servants and the Grail War system itself had been much more fruitful.

They had learned the wrong lessons from the Third Holy Grail War. She was only just beginning to realize the depths of _how_ badly they had led themselves astray.

_If this is Einzbern's mess, it's my duty to clean it up. _

But Illya wanted to tell them. She didn't want to be the only one who knew. The only one with a responsibility. Her Berserker was the most powerful Servant there was, but if there was a Grand Servant involved… Could she do this alone?

She wasn't sure.

But above and beyond all of that, Sakura's grandfather had been the one to summon it. If she was wrong about Sakura, if she was just an incredible actor and that torrent of confessional emotion had been a lie, then to even mention his name would be to tip her hand to the true enemy. The risks outweighed the benefits. Zouken might not know that he had been observed, and the element of surprise was too important to throw away. "Even if there was something to tell, I don't think I should tell a Makiri," Illya finally said. "Even if you say you're not on their—"

"Please don't call me that," Sakura said in a small voice. Her eyes were hidden behind her hair, like a funeral shroud.

"A Matou, then," Illya said with a petulant sigh. She didn't want to play this stupid game.

Sakura's shoulders hunched together, her head dipping lower as she drew in on herself. "Please don't call me that either." Her hands squeezed the mug in her hand. Relaxed. Squeezed again. Over and over. Her voice, quiet as a mouse, shook. The transformation in demeanor had been nearly instantaneous. Were her mood swings so bad, or had this been simmering just beneath the surface this whole time?

Illya frowned. Was this a tactic? Sakura trying to distance herself from her family to gain her trust? To find out what she knew? That was what she wanted to believe, but it didn't feel right. There was too much… too much _something_ in those words. "I shouldn't call you what you are? I'm not going to trust one of my family's oldest enemies just because you made me hot chocolate."

With trembling hands, Sakura set both of the mugs down on the nightstand by the bed. Illya still couldn't see her eyes, but she tensed, wondering if Sakura was freeing up her hands to attack. Instead, the Matou laced her fingers together in her lap so tightly that the nails dug into her own skin. "Would you like to know what I am?" Her voice had gone utterly flat. Devoid of life. "Would you like to know how much a Matou I really am? Would that make you call me something else? Of all the ones in this War, you should know best what I am."

Illya felt out of her depth, but she nodded. This was more than she'd bargained for, and she didn't exactly know what else to do. _Are you still there, Berserker? _she asked, and felt the reassuring pushback of his presence. A question. Did she need him? _Not yet. But be ready if I do._

"The Matou bloodline is dying," she said robotically. "They no longer have the talent, or the ability to learn. My brother should have been the heir, and all he can do is alchemy, because it doesn't require wielding magical energy." Her fingers tightened, relaxed, tightened, the way they had on the mug. "I am not Matou by blood. Or at least… I wasn't. Not at first."

Illya blinked. There had been speculation among her family that Zouken had allowed his bloodline to grow thin and weak, but to the extent that a man so prideful as he would go outside the family for an _heir?_ Her jab at Rider had been more pointed than she'd realized. But before she could follow the chain of implication, Sakura was speaking again.

Squeeze. Relax. Squeeze. "I became a Matou when I was six. It started with infusions. Blood magic. Bodily transformation. I had to look the part, so they changed my hair and my eyes and even my skin." Squeeze. Release. Squeeze.

Change like that wasn't easy. Change like that came with a price. It wasn't a bottle of hair dye, a pair of colored contacts, and done; it was a fundamental alteration on a genetic level. A rewriting of DNA. Delicate, dangerous… and painful. Every cell in the body, altered. Of course that would hurt.

_We're ready to perform the summoning, Illya._

_Will it hurt?_

_It may._

_I'm strong._

"But that was easy. That was the easy part." She took a shuddering breath, but her tone of voice didn't change in the slightest. "Do you know what a Crest Worm is?"

Illya blinked, then shook her head, her mouth dry. Zouken used bugs and worms and other disgusting things like that, but a Crest Worm? Apart from a guess that it had something to do with a Magic Crest, she was drawing a blank. She read up on other prominent families and their abilities, but with the decline in magical ability on the part of the Makiri, she may have just realized she was skimming those notes.

The corner of Sakura's mouth ticked back again, then became a bitter smile. "Then you are truly lucky," she said, still monotone.

_Your whole body is a Command Spell._

_He is powerful, Illya, and you are very small._

_That's why you are in pain. If you understand, then why are you crying?_

_Pathetic._

"Grandfather's basement is vast, and it is full of them. Even from my bedroom, I… I could hear them. Slithering, and chittering, and squealing. Crying out for me. Missing me. What they would do to me." Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. A trickle of blood ran down her fingers, and Illya realized that her palms were covered in similar scabs.

Illya had a scar too. Teeth marks on her back.

_**Berserker!**_

The wolves.

_**Please help me!**_

She shivered, and the old (but not _that_ old) scars burned like fingers crawling up her spine.

"My grandfather threw me in with them and left me to rot. They feed. They feed and they feed and they feed—" her voice being so calm didn't make sense with the way her breath came in short, ragged bursts— "until there's nothing left of you. Body or mind. I thought more than once that I was already dead, but then I would be pulled out. Be me again just long enough to understand what was happening to me. Then I would be put back in. I didn't think there was anything left. I always thought there was nothing left. But they always found more of me to take. More of me to make theirs." Sakura took a shaking breath, her eyes still hidden, but Illya knew that Sakura wasn't crying. Illya wouldn't have cried. She knew they were enough alike to hold it together when they needed to. "I'm probably not even human anymore. Grandfather said it was for a purpose. A purpose. That I suffered for a purpose, and that he was so proud of how well I bore it." She was shaking again. Like the last leaf in the winter wind. "He was so proud of me. He was so proud, and I just kept going back because I knew if I didn't then he would make me anyway. They would all make me do whatever they wanted because I was just a possession. I was theirs. And I couldn't fight back. If I fought back, it would be so much worse… I couldn't even—"

_Ah, Illya, you're back. How was your stroll?_

_I can't move anymore. He's hurting me. Please help me._

_You survived out there. You learned from the pain. We would not want to undo all of that progress, would we? You will walk to bed._

Illya couldn't move. Her mouth tasted like blood, but nothing was bleeding. Her fingers shook, and she with slow realization finally understood the scabs on Sakura's palm.

"But I don't know if there was a reason for what my brother did to me. What he did to me. What he did to me. What he made me." Now there was something in her voice. A desperate scream dancing on the edges, straining to be released. Barely controlled anger and hatred and sorrow and guilt and jealousy. Her eyes were still hidden. "He hurt me because he hated me. He hated me because I wasn't a Matou. He— He—" She couldn't speak for a moment, for the way her lips ticked back, for the way her head twitched. Squeezereleasesqueezereleasesqueezerelease. "He tortured me too. He liked torturing me as much as Grandfather, but at least Grandfather _loved _me. In a different way but the same way, but it was because I wasn't a Matou and I could never be a Matou and, and—" She took a shuddering breath, and the room trembled.

_She's going to explode. She's going to lose control. _Illya's eyes widened, but before she could prepare for whatever Sakura was about to unleash—

"And—"

She saw Sakura's shadow.

She'd been vaguely aware of it, the way she'd been vaguely aware of anything else in the room. But Sakura's shadow… It had started out as just the twitch that could have been Sakura's slight movements, but Sakura was motionless, save for the shaking. She could have just been cold.

Now, behind her, splayed across the floor and the wall by the soft, warm light of the lamp by the bed, Sakura's shadow was tearing at its hair. It had been a slowly creeping movement at first, the raising of arms by fractions until they climbed to the shifting hair, twisting like snakes. The shadow tugged and tugged and tugged more and more and more violently, snatching from one side to the other, and something gave way; tufts of it tore out and disappeared into the light. An animal shredding into a carcass. The head slowly turned as if shaking its head _no_ and increased in speed until it whipped back and forth, like a cornered animal looking desperately for an escape and seeing no way out. Illya thought that there were bared teeth somewhere in the shadow itself, but that made even less sense.

Nothing about this made sense.

Every single thing about Sakura of the Makiri or the Matou or the… whatever… made zero sense.

The arms of the shadow lowered and wrapped themselves around its body, its shoulders heaving in a pantomime of heavy sobs. Everything that Sakura wanted to do. Wanted to be. Violent. Grief-stricken. The silent heaving shrugs of sobbing changed as the thing wriggled like a caterpillar transformed, wriggling and shaking in its cocoon, trying to break free. Swelling, writhing, a giant, angry worm ready to explode. That image coalesced into a much larger version of the shadow that had been, and an indistinct head threw itself back, tendrils of hair spanning the floor like ropes or vipers, snaking their ways to all corners. The shadow screamed soundlessly, and its edges shook and trembled with the silent violence of it, like the surface of water near a bass speaker.

The unrestrained violence of the shadow rippled from the floor and into the air, bleeding its magical energy—its pure, violent, evil-ridden magical energy—into the air with an angry hornet's nest hum. The droning increased and built on itself until Illya felt nauseated and weak. The air in the room went tight and stale and electrified.

Sakura's mug of tea on the nightstand exploded, boiling liquid and shards of ceramic spraying through the air, and Illya barely got a barrier up in time before any of it could hurt her. She prepared a counterspell, but the moment the explosion of magical energy had faded, Sakura went limp, and all the power went out of the room. She hung in the chair like a marionette whose strings had been cut, arms dangling at her sides, head so far down Illya halfway wondered if she'd snapped her own neck. She wasn't even sure if Sakura was conscious or unconscious until she spoke.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice choked with tears, so quiet Illya could barely hear her even from the bed.

Illya looked at her with open-mouthed shock, the magic fading from her fingertips. Nothing about what she'd just seen made sense. None of what she'd just _felt_ made sense. Magically or emotionally.

It was a broken record thought, but that knowledge didn't stop it from recurring.

Now that the danger had passed, she was a deer in the headlights.

No books or lessons or training had ever prepared her for whatever the hell this was.

"I'm sorry," Sakura whispered again. Her fingers twitched, raised halfway to her head, dropped again. Her neck twitched twice. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—"

Something clicked inside her.

"Stop," Illya said, and the sheer commanding presence in her voice surprised even her.

Sakura froze mid-tremor, as perfectly and completely as if she were a Servants and Illya had used a Command Seal. Her breaths came in jumping gasps, like someone who was crying without tears. Silent hiccups and soundless sniffles. The room was silent. Slowly, jerkily, her head lifted enough for Illya to see her wide, red-rimmed eyes. Her lips were pressed together so tightly that she must think she'd be killed if she spoke out of turn again. She was more pale than any living thing Illya had ever seen.

Illya didn't like the feeling. She didn't like being feared. At least… not at this moment. It didn't make sense; she _relished_ the power that came from being feared. But this just made her feel bad. "Just…" She didn't really know where she was going with this, but her mouth was moving all by itself. "Just stop, okay? Stop crying. Stop apologizing. It's okay. It's okay, Sakura."

Sakura's lip trembled, but she nodded shakily. Behind her, her shadow mimicked her every move, the way a shadow was supposed to. It was a struggle not to allow herself the fantasy that whatever Illya had seen was nothing more than a trick of the light, a product of her tired, overtaxed mind, but that wasn't a luxury she could afford. Sakura Matou was a ticking time bomb, for all she knew.

_Don't call me that either._

"Sakura," Illya said firmly, as though speaking to a dog, and Sakura flinched back. The metaphor clarified her feelings a little; instinctually, on an animalistic level, she knew not to show fear. Not after a display like that. "Is that what you want me to call you?"

Sakura nodded, then looked away.

_Look at me when I am speaking to you, Illyasviel._

_You are not a child._

There was something in Illya's chest. It hurt. She didn't know what it was. She didn't like it. It felt the way—

_Chestnut._

—it felt when she thought about people she used to love.

_That's just part of being a Magus,_ she wanted to say. _They hurt us so we can be better. We only learn by getting hurt. If that was all it took to break you so badly, you were never worth anything to begin with. I survived the wolves. I survived the Seals. I survived Berserker. Do you think any of us have happy childhoods? Do you think any of us remember what love is? This is the path to power. This is the path to glory. This is what we're supposed to be. Survivors. So stop crying about it. Give up your magic or deal with it._

"When I was eight years old, my dad killed my mom," Illya said instead, her voice soft and distant in her own ears. Sakura's head didn't move, but her eyes flicked over to look at Illya. "I thought he loved her, and I thought he loved me. They went on this trip. Now I know they were part of the last Holy Grail War, but all I knew then was that they were going on a trip, and that they'd be back soon." She looked away, stubbornly staring a hole in the wall to her right. She wanted to stop. She needed to stop. This _girl_ or _thing_ didn't need to know this. She didn't stop. "My dad betrayed her. He betrayed everything they were working toward, and he betrayed my family. I sat there in my room, smiling and laughing and looking out the window to see if they were coming up the path, at the same time that he was doing it. At the same time his hands were..."

She remembered those days clearly, in retrospect. She'd had nightmares every single night, especially at the end, but she had stubbornly believed that things would go back to normal.

"I didn't believe it when they told me. Not even when they started pushing my training until it hurt so bad that I couldn't breathe. I kept thinking he was going to come strolling up the stairs to pull me into his arms. To wake me up from the bad dream. To save me."

_He killed her, Illyasviel. With his bare hands, he killed her._

_And would you like to know what he did after that? The very next thing your father did, with your mother's blood still wet on his hands?_

"And then I found out that he had replaced me. He had a new son, already. He got tired of the child he had, and he just… got a new one." She could remember it so clearly. The jagged, bleeding edge of betrayal. She couldn't remember why it had tipped her over the edge, but hearing that had finally made her believe what had happened. She faced reality and understood what kind of world she'd been born into. "That's when I understood. The world is broken. Everyone is broken. It happens to different people at different times, but you either break and rebuild or you die."

It was a remarkably terrible pep-talk, even by her own standards, Illya thought, but Sakura looked up. Her hair was a mess, as though she'd just awoken from a deep, dark slumber, and the one eye that Illya could see was wide and shimmering.

Illya shifted uncomfortably. "What?"

Sakura's lip trembled.

Illya didn't like that.

No one had ever looked at her like that before.

The silence stretched out. The moment didn't seem like it was going to end.

Sakura pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, and alarm bells began blaring in Illya's head. _Is she going to attack me? After all that? She looks like she's going to pass out if she moves too fast. _Still, after the whirlwind of the last few minutes, it was better to be safe than sorry. Illya fumbled for her magic, grasping for the threads of power that she could weave into a second spell if Sakura came for her. It was harder than it should have been; the protective shield she'd conjured to protect herself from the flying glass and boiling water had taken a lot out of her.

Sakura drew closer, and Illya scooted away, the cold trickle of fear once again running down her spine. "What are you doing?" she hissed, confused, still grasping for her magic. She missed every time. Her magic circuits burned the way they did when she over-exerted herself, and for the first time she found herself wondering whether the ritual's backlash had done real damage.

Sakura stood over her now, and she didn't stop getting closer, and she extended her arms and as Illya threw her mind wide open to shout for Berseker—

Illya found herself not under attack, but wrapped in a tight hug. Sakura's arms wrapped tight around her and squeezed. Not enough to hurt. Not so weak as to feel awkward. It was the perfect hug. Cradled in soft fabric and softer skin and the smell of honeysuckle.

It was the first time anyone had held her like this in a decade.

"It's okay," Sakura whispered, and it was the steadiest her voice had been since Illya had called her Makiri. "It's okay, Illya. You've been through so much, but you're still here." A strange sensation. It took Illya a moment to realize that Sakura was stroking her head, as though she were soothing a child throwing a tantrum.

Illya was not a child. Her growth had been stunted by the restrictive command seals etched across her body, and her voice was prepubescent, and her demeanor was childlike because she enjoyed the fantasy of being a child, but she was no child. She was eighteen years old. She had been through ordeals that would have killed anyone so genuinely immature. A child could not endure the pain of Berserker's presence. A child could not have survived the wolves. A child could not have survived the training she had. Tears were for children, and she was not a child.

Wrapped in the closest thing to a loving embrace she could remember, Illyasviel von Einzbern started to cry.

* * *

_NOTE: Got so many papers to write. Pray for me, y'all._

_Next chapter: The Art of Failure_


	30. The Art of Failure

_He is me and I am him._

_One ends somewhere between. Somewhere between, the other begins._

_The images are confused, scattered. They churn and boil, twisting and distorting and shattering and reforming. I do not have the strength to think. All I can do is watch. If I had skin, it would be clammy. If I had bones, they would shake. If I had a body, I would shiver._

_Human life as fever dream._

_Glass shatters. A man screams. _

_The sound of steel rending flesh. _

_The cry of a newborn. _

_The feel of a stone in hand. Craggy, porous. It scrapes my palm._

_A city. A city._

_A different city, but the same city. _

_Hot blood on the face. Ice in my throat. _

_Fire. _

_Fire. _

_Fire. _

_Fire in my veins. A desolate hellscape of flame and death, presided over by a_

_by a _

_ by a _

_void that cannot be encompassed in words. _

_The beautiful desert. The coolness of night air. Burning in my blood._

_Lament. Lament for what was taken. _

_The guilt in my veins. _

_Lament. _

_A middle aged man I do not know, cradling my hand and smiling. You're alive. _

_Lament. Someone's alive. _

_I am death. I will never die. I died in the fire ten years before. I will die with _

_a rope around my throat_

_the swords of my friends_

_my head held high because I am_

_I am_

_I am?_

_Lament, for you are._

_Who am I?_

_Lament._

_Who is he?_

_Lament for what you stole. Lament for what was stolen from you._

_Who are we?_

_Why does it hurt?_

_An enemy. He stands before me._

_**Bare thy neck.**_

_A lover's smile. A friend's tears._

_**Bare thy neck.**_

_The throngs of innocents. Bare thy neck to save the many._

_Honest work._

_Lament._

_Years pass._

_Years pass._

_Years pass._

_The work doesn't end._

_Honest work is honest work._

_His will is honest work._

_They call you_

_murderer_

_They call you_

_reaper_

_They call you_

_assassin_

_But honest work is honest work._

_The purple haired girl smiles_

_and all is right with the world._

_The voice of the angel._

_the clarion call_

_He checks in now and then._

_I don't know what to make of him._

_An enemy?_

_**You are a killer.**_

_So are you._

_You are marked in more ways than one, ◼◼◼◼◼._

_A friend?_

_Two professionals. Different jobs in the same field._

_Azrael is afforded less time to rest than me._

_But then, he doesn't need rest._

_Longing like a boulder in the chest._

_Days gone by._

_Not regrets. Not quite._

_She looks so frail, doesn't she?_

_If I touched her, she'd crumble to dust._

_**Bare thy neck.**_

_She is—_

_Glass breaks._

_My best friend._

_My-_

_A man screams._

_Wake up, Shirou._

_Wake, and lament._

* * *

Consciousnesses returned with all the grace and subtlety of a sledgehammer, and Shirou screamed. Or tried to, anyway. All that came out was a whimper as he thrashed, hands twisted into claws, gouging at the dirt, feet churning the grass.

"Emiya?" Rin's voice was panicked, startled, and with wild eyes cast in her direction, he saw her. She was covered in dust, and her sleeves had been torn. Blood ran from a corner of her mouth, and bruises mottled one hand, but she was alive, and she was here. Her hand fumbled for his, and his thrashing ceased; as he focused on her face, something familiar and comforting, the world around him began to come back into focus. Her eyes were wide, and though she didn't seem to be crying, clean streaks cut through the dust below her eyes.

Her hand was soft, and it was warm. It felt solid in a way his own body didn't.

His chest heaving uncontrollably, he fought to get his breathing under control, but it were as though his body had sprung a leak. He couldn't seem to get enough air.

"Emiya…" Rin whispered, and the most genuine, relieved smile he'd ever seen her wear spread across her face. "I wasn't sure you'd wake up."

His heart pounded, the adrenaline too much for his body to comfortably handle. He shook his head, dazed. The world spun madly around him in a way he didn't particularly enjoy. "Toh… saka…" The word dissolved into a coughing fit, and it felt as though his throat were tearing itself apart. Had he swallowed broken glass at some point? When he was once again under control, he spit a glob of blood into the dirt. "Where are we? What happened?"

Rin's voice shook. It was strange to hear. "Caster saved us. She said we're in her debt, but we're alive. She teleported us away from Kirei. Said he wouldn't be able to track the spell."

Someone seemed to have replaced his skull with something jagged and sharp, with rusty nails jamming into his brain. He should just go back to sleep, where it didn't hurt, where he wouldn't have to—

_Lament._

—no, being awake was better, actually.

His vision continued to clear, and his surroundings resolved themselves into a park. Not _the _park, the one where

_he burned_

the last War had ended, but one of the many smaller ones dotting the city like tiny gardens of peace. Snow was lightly falling, and had begun to accumulate everywhere but a circle about five yards across, with him directly in the center. Now that he'd noticed it, he could feel the quiet buzz of the spell Rin was maintaining over the two of them, keeping them dry. "Archer…? Did you get him out?"

Rin made a sound somewhere between a snort and a sniffle. "Yeah, no thanks to Caster." She held up the back of her hand; more of her Command Seal was a dull red than it had been before the fight. "Only one left, but he's alive. He woke up about fifteen minutes ago, and he's keeping an eye in spirit form right now."

"Fifteen…" Shirou groaned, rubbing his head with a hand that felt like jelly. "How long have I been out?"

"About an hour," Rin said. Some of the strength was beginning to come back into her voice. It was reassuring; Rin on the verge of tears was not a Rin that felt natural to hear.

He looked down at the small splat of blood on the ground. "Shouldn't I be in a hospital?" he asked before his brain could catch up to what his mouth was saying.

Rin looked at him like he'd just eaten a fly, and for a moment, everything was normal again. "That'd be an awful idea for about a hundred reasons, Emiya, but if you need a reason, when a person gets hit with the kind of magical backlash you did, the less you move them, the better."

He opened his mouth to speak.

"And I'm not carrying you home again," she grumbled. "Once was enough. Any more and I'll have to start charging you. I'm not a taxi."

Shirou smiled painfully. "Did I ever thank you for that?"

Rin sighed. "I don't remember. It feels like years ago. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss when Berserker was the scariest thing we had to deal with."

"Well, thank you," Shirou said. "Not just for that. For everything. I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for you."

With an uncomfortable shift, Rin looked away. "Well, you saved my life first. Sort of. And then you were just so pathetic that it wouldn't have been right to leave you be. What kind of protector of the city would I be if I didn't repay that debt?"

Shirou smiled at her, then let his head roll back to gaze up at the sky. The snow danced on the breeze, sliding off the small dome of magic Rin had built for them. It felt a little like being in some kind of strange reverse-snow globe. It was beautiful.

They sat in silence. Shirou couldn't feel the cold. That was either a really bad thing, or Rin was also warming them both while they rested.

A question gnawed at Shirou's gut. He didn't want to break the silence, but he could finally wait no longer. "What about Assassin?"

Rin sighed. "Caster said he vanished at the same time we did, but also that she had nothing to do with it, so I don't know what that actually means. You're still a Master, so I'm guessing he didn't poof because he died. If I had to guess? He's wandering around in spirit form looking for us. Or… you know. Whatever."

An image sprang unbidden to Shirou's mind of Assassin going door to door with Lost Master posters, and he snorted. Rin gave him a strange look, but didn't question him. "He'll find us," he said, still smiling. "Even if he has to meet us back at the house, he'll find us."

"If he _wants_ to find us after that," Rin said cryptically.

They lapsed into silence again. A car passed in the distance. A crumpled newspaper tumbled awkwardly by. The snow was falling harder, now, the flakes fat and heavy.

This time, she was the one to break the silence. "You're hurt, Shirou." She sounded distant. A touch clinical.

"Hurt?" he frowned. "I mean, yeah, I ache all over, but—"

"Not physically. Not any more than you were after Berserker, anyway, and you were up and moving and everything fine then. You were really busted up, but… ultimately, you were fine." Rin chewed on her lip, looking off into the distance. "I don't know what I feel, but I feel it. It's your…" She seemed to fumble for words. "Energy, I guess. Your mana. It's wrong."

Shirou smiled weakly. "We knew that, right? The whole... switch thing."

Rin shook her head. "That was just your body being stuck as a partial conduit. This is… new. I only noticed it after Caster was gone, but I don't know when it changed. I don't think she did it to you."

"Wrong? New?" Shirou's smile became a frown. "You're not describing it very well."

For a second, he thought she was going to slap him. "That's because it's subtle, dumbass. I can barely feel it. If I knew what it was, I'd tell you." She grimaced. "Magical energy is colorless. It doesn't have any kind of inherent… anything until we add intent to it, but a drop of color is all it takes to tint it. When I look at you, when I see the magic that flows through you, it feels a little like—" She stopped herself, her dirty, streaked face going a little pale. "No, I don't know what I'm saying. I'm tired, Emiya. I'm probably seeing things that aren't there."

"I trust you," he said earnestly. "We'll figure it out. We always do, right?"

She didn't reply.

"Rin?" he said.

She blinked at him.

Shirou raised one hand. Fully extended, the tips of his fingers passed through her spell, and where his fingers were exposed, he could feel the bitter cold, the gentle wind that could so easily turn cruel, the drip of icy water. "What are we going to do?"

Rin didn't respond.

"We fight, obviously," Shirou said, and he sounded distant, even to himself. "But… what do we do?"

The sound of a slow exhalation to his side. "I think the first thing we do is go home. Sakura's still home alone, and we should make sure she's safe."

A wry smile tugged at his lips. She was a better person than she pretended to be. "Yeah. She's probably worried sick. She needs to know we're okay."

"_Are_ we okay?" Rin didn't sound like herself. She sounded tentative in a way he wasn't sure he'd ever heard her before. "That was our chance. Our one chance. We had surprise. He was at his weakest. And we blew it. He's only going to get stronger from here."

"We can't change what's already happened," Shirou said, much more firmly than he actually felt. "Yeah, that didn't go as well as it could have, but…" His head was still swimming uncomfortably, and that made it hard to order his thoughts. "We know more than we did before. We know it's Kirei, not Zouken. We know who the angel is, a little bit, and it sounded like Assassin knew him, so we might be able to find out more next time we talk. We know he's got Lancer and Rider as allies, and we know how strong he is. I'm not sure how the church blew up, but that was his sanctuary, and it's gone. If Kirei had a workshop or something, he doesn't anymore."

Rin continued staring out into the middle distance. "Is that enough?"

"It will be," Shirou said. "You're brilliant, Rin. Sakura is too, and Assassin. I'm not sure about Archer but… Archer and Assassin _are_ powerful. You're an amazing mage. And it's not just us. Now we know Caster and Saber are Abaddon's enemies, too. They're not our friends, but they want the same thing as us right now. I don't know about Illya and Berserker, but I don't think they'd want anything to do with him either."

"Illyasviel is a loner," Rin said distractedly. "She won't want anything to do with him. She'll probably see him as an insult to her family and to the Grail War system. But you can't forget those runes on the Summoning Circle. I know it means nothing to you, but they _were_ Einzbern magic. She could be involved."

He tried to imagine Kirei— no, Abaddon — and Illya standing side by side. It wasn't something he could picture. Not in any kind of way that felt like truth. "I don't think so," he said. "I think she'll be his enemy too, when he knows about him."

Shirou had never heard someone snort hopelessly before, but Rin managed it. "You seem real sure about that."

"Well," he replied with forced brightness, "if nothing else, Illya really hated Rider. They probably wouldn't work together, no matter what."

Rin gave him a withering look, but broke down into a tired sigh. "You might be right." She glanced down, her fingers interlacing.

Shirou pushed himself up to a sitting position. A spike of pain rammed through his head at the sudden change in verticality, but he smiled through it. He hoped it didn't look like a grimace. "We should get moving. She's waiting for us." He held out a hand. "Both of us."

Rin closed her eyes, and for a moment, she looked as though she were about to burst into tears. Then the moment passed, and when she opened them, determination burned within. "We'll figure this out," she said, grasping his hand in an iron grip, and Shirou wondered whether her hope was real, or if she just couldn't let herself look weak anymore.

* * *

If Artoria's Master was an enigma, Caster's Master was an open book, and every single page was blank.

His name was Souichirou Kuzuki, and he taught at a local school. That much, she had been able to glean from conversations as the two of them passed her on the stairs, but beyond that, there didn't seem to be anything to the man. At first, Artoria had thought that he was Caster's puppet, the way Caster clearly wanted _her_ to be, but the genuine love and affection she saw in Caster's eyes whenever they were together seemed to run contrary to that. He never spoke first; he only ever seemed to speak when spoken to. At times, he seemed more a mannequin than a man, and he'd never taken the slightest interest in anything that she'd been able to see.

Which made it so weird that he was currently standing on one of her steps, gazing down at the town, just behind her. "Do you hate her?" His voice was as bland and uninflected as always. Mashed potatoes without salt or butter or garlic. Artoria didn't get the sense that he cared much one way or the other whether she did. There was a strange kind of safety in that.

Artoria set her jaw stubbornly. "She hasn't really given me a lot of reason not to."

Kuzuki didn't respond, his curiosity apparently sated. But still, he didn't move.

The wind blew softly. Flakes of snow danced in the cold air, the way they always had. Artoria's breath steamed out before her, and though she would not be hurt by this cold, she was overtaken by a sudden, desperate longing for home and hearth. And if not that, then she'd settle for better company. "Do you want something, Kuzuki, or are you just going to stand there and stare at me? It's kind of creeping me out."

"When the time comes, Artoria Pendragon, are you willing to die for her?" His tone was no different than it had been a moment before; to him, it sounded as if each question was of equal importance. Maybe they were.

_No_ was the easy answer. The one she wanted to give. That every fiber of her being _ached _to give. She hated Caster. She hated this war. She wanted no part of it to begin with, and she certainly didn't want to die for her loathsome Master. No matter how it happened, it would be a stupid, useless death. The punchline to the joke that was her summoning.

But…

When she'd told that boy on the stairs that duty was something you followed no matter how you felt about it, she'd meant it on a fundamental level. Even as young as she was, she'd spent a great deal of time amongst knights of the realm; though no man was perfect, there was often a clear dividing line between the Good Knights and the Bad Knights. The good ones followed their code through to the bitter end. The bad ones lived for themselves above all. They couldn't see that there was anything greater to the world than themselves.

She wouldn't be like them.

She couldn't be.

She had to look no further than her own Master to see the kind of person you became when you lived only for yourself.

Kuzuki waited patiently for an answer. He seemed like the kind of man who could outlast steel.

"A knight's duty is to her lord," she said, and she could hear the tension in her own voice, even as she said it. The words tasted like her own blood. "If I am given no other choice, I will."

"Interesting," was Kuzuki's only response.

"Interesting?"

"I had anticipated the answer, but I had not expected to believe you."

Artoria's face twisted into a wry expression that wasn't quite anger. "Do I strike you as a liar?"

"You struck me as a child," Kuzuki said simply. "You may have gathered that I work in a school, these days. Most children do not possess the sort of willpower it would take to die for something so ephemeral as an ideal. Especially one that runs so counter to one's own desires."

"I had to grow up fast," she muttered darkly. "I never had things as easy as you seem to think."

Kuzuki didn't immediately reply. "You never did have much of a childhood. The Wart, was it?"

Anger flared behind her chest, hot and bright, and she whirled, Caliburn in hand. The tip came to a halt inches from Kuzuki's breast, and it did not waver. "_You_ do not get to call me that," she said, and she could hear the dangerous buzz in her own voice. "You presume too much."

The stony face before her did not soften — she did not think it capable of softening — but its eyes closed, the corner of one lip quirking in something that was almost a smile. "My apologies," he said. "I did not intend to offend." He didn't fear her, and she knew that, but the reminder that he would not even flinch for her cut deep in a way she wasn't sure he'd even considered.

Her eyes narrowed, she lowered the sword, trying to ignore the pang of insecurity that accompanied the gesture. "Just don't do it again."

Like a hot knife through butter, Caster's voice rang out from behind Artoria, cutting through the (fairly one-sided) argument. "Artoria. Souichirou. To me." Kuzuki didn't move, save for his eyes. Artoria turned sheepishly, Caliburn's tip resting sadly on the ground.

Artoria's Master was a pale woman, but the person who stood before her now was ashen. Nothing on the visible parts of her face indicated any distress, but the greyish pall to her skin told a different story. For one brief, ludicrous moment, Artoria wondered if Caster was dying. Her robes flowed around her like water, billowing in the breeze the way they always did, but there was something about the posture of the woman underneath that spoke of stiffness and anxiety. When she spoke, her voice was as strong as it ever was. "I saved Archer and Assassin's Masters from our enemy. Their debt will prove useful in the days to come."

Artoria thought back to the pair; the girl in red and the boy in blue. Good people. People she might have come to like, in another life. The boy had been more than a little condescending, if well-meaning, and he had humiliated her. The girl had been the real threat between the two of them, judging by her skill at magic, but she would have been easy prey for Caster if she'd been giving her all. "More flies tangled up in your web," she muttered.

Caster did not rise to the bait. She did not even incline her head to meet Artoria's gaze; rather, she seemed to gaze at a point directly between Kuzuki and Artoria herself. "I met our enemy," she said instead. "The eighth piece."

Kuzuki made a humming sound deep in his chest; one of thought and acknowledgement. "And what did you learn?"

"He is a Divine Spirit, clad in the flesh of the Overseer." Her voice was level, but Artoria could not help a gasp.

"A Divine—"

Caster held up one hand, the black glove clean and unmarried. "He is powerful, yes. Stronger than me. Stronger than any one participant in this war. Had I tried to fight him there, I would have been cut down."

Artoria's mouth fell open. Such an open admission of weakness… It wasn't like her Master. Kuzuki, on the other hand, only nodded. "I assume you are not unprepared for this eventuality," he said.

Caster nodded. "Rather than fight him, I took from him his prey. I do not think he will let this insult pass. He will retaliate. I am planning for him to do so." Her head moved, her gaze focused on the temple above. "Our stronghold is guarded, but the time for subtlety has passed."

"Your plan?" Kuzuki asked.

Caster smiled, the edge of casual cruelty returning to her expression. There was something uncomfortably comforting about it. "When he comes for us, he will not find a temple, ripe for the plundering. He will find a fortress the likes of which the world has not seen since the fall of Troy." With a swirl of fabric, she swept confidently up the stairs, passing Artoria without a second glance. "Come with me. Both of you. We have much to prepare."

* * *

This was bullshit.

"This is bullshit," Lancer muttered. The side of his face burned. A jagged cut ran down the length of his face, scabbed over as though it had been inflicted days before rather than hours. On a normal human being, it would have left a twisted scar that would mark him for the rest of his life; on a Servant, it would probably be gone this time tomorrow.

That was a little disappointing, to be honest. He was proud of his battle scars, and this special Servant's body had retained none of them. By the time he'd finally died, he'd had more scar tissue than unbroken skin; the sign of a life well lived and battles well fought. Now he looked like a baby-faced boy who had never tasted battle before. It was embarrassing.

Not that he was proud of _that_ injury. It hadn't come from glorious combat. Not really, despite the fact that he'd been fighting that crimson bastard when it had happened. No, this one he'd gotten when their glorious leader had fucked up his mana and blown the church straight to Hell while Lancer had been standing next to it. They'd originally gone back to the church to try to rest and recover, but that hadn't lasted very long before said church had been reduced to a smoking crater, so they'd had to go with plan B.

Medb blinked at him, her wide eyes dark, stormclouds covering the bubbly mask she usually wore. "I'm surprised to hear you say that, Cu," she said, and for one of the first times maybe ever, she sounded like she was speaking to him as a person and not a plaything. It wouldn't last; when she remembered the big ugly bruise across one side of her face could conceivably be blamed upon him and his refusal to work with her, she'd go right back to the condescension and manipulation. "I thought you liked Abaddon. Better than that shitty priest, right?" The events of the last hour had shaken them both, though neither was willing to admit it to the other.

Plan B was a shitty motel. Abaddon, muttering to himself about some bullshit, of which Lancer could only catch about one word in three. His train of thought had sounded like it was running in circles by the time they had arrived and he had retreated, alone, into one of the rooms. He needed rest, he'd kept saying. He needed to think. Whatever that meant.

"_They're coming for us,"_ _Abaddon had whispered, standing in the doorway of the motel room they had rented with the last of Medb's pocket change. "They won't stop until we're dead." His voice was quiet, but it shook subtly — with fear or anticipation, Lancer couldn't tell._

"_So we're fighting?" Medb had asked, anger still buzzing in her throat like an angry trapped wasp. _

"_I need to think," Abaddon had said, and closed the door, shutting them out._

_Lancer had remained silent._

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, a creaky old fan turning lazily a few feet away. No one else but the two of them sat in this musty old excuse for a public sitting room. A slight draft tickled his hair, but he was too preoccupied to take any pleasure in the simple sensation.

_Condescension and disgust dripped from Archer's words like venom. "So, what, then? Not only following orders like a trained dog, but cooperating with someone you hate? What's that sound like to you?" Dull rage swelled within Lancer, sweeping everything else away, his easygoing manner gone. A question as precisely placed to do the most harm as any strike Gae Bolg had ever made. He was not—_

Lancer took a deep breath, swallowed his pride, and thought a quick prayer to whatever gods might be eavesdropping. "Medb," he said, and he hoped he sounded exactly as laconic as he didn't feel.

Medb frowned, and for a brief moment, she looked like… well, like a regular girl. Not a monster. It didn't abate the disgust and hatred, but it was just enough to be disconcerting. "Yeah?"

Lancer leaned back in the creaky leather chair, staring up at the ceiling, arms crossed over his chest. He was silent for a minute. He wasn't good with words, the ideas he couldn't get out of his head were awful, and as much as he hated it, Medb was the only person he had to talk to about this shit. It was her or the wall, and at least Medb could talk back. "You're a bitch, but you know me better than anyone alive."

Medb nodded, playing along. He could see the gears turning in her head, see her consider what would the best manipulation tactic at this moment. Understanding? Condescension? She probably saw whatever she thought he was about to say as a way to get another of her hooks into him, but she feigned charisma and empathy well when she wanted to. "We have a history," she said noncommittally.

Lancer sighed, fixing his inhuman eyes on a spot where water damage had discolored the plaster tiles above his head. "Am I still me?" he asked finally, loathing with every fiber of his being the vulnerability inherent in those words.

Medb studied him, but he figured that was as much a part of the act as anything. She'd been watching him a lot since they had joined up with Abaddon, and he doubted there was anything new for her to learn at the moment. For maybe the first time ever, he felt precariously balanced on a precipice, waiting for her answer. The silence was agonizing. "You've never been good with taking orders," she said. "There wasn't a single person in the world who could have commanded you to be near me this long." She smiled sweetly. "But I would have gotten there eventually. I keep telling you, you'll be mine." Even the threat had less bite than she could usually muster.

_She's right. Everything else I can justify, but… _Lancer grimaced to hide the cold icicle of fear that had been thrust through his chest. Abaddon had never commanded him to stay; that would have been easy, because after that _first_ command, it would have been obvious why he stuck around. But if all Abaddon had to do was _want_ something for Lancer to be bound, and not to have to speak it aloud… That was something far more terrifying. An invasion that he couldn't understand or be comfortable with. A violation. "Go to hell," he said, but his heart wasn't in it.

Her smile faded, and she looked away from him. She'd always been a tiny person, but now she seemed somehow even smaller, more fragile. "You're afraid of him, aren't you?" she said quietly. Unconsciously, she reached up to touch the bruise on her cheek, lightly dragging dainty fingers across it. Two of her nails had broken. A nasty scrape ran down the length of one arm, and there was a tear in the dirty fabric of the t-shirt they had purchased only that morning that genuinely didn't look at all sexy and intentional. Her hair was dirty and knotted, her tiara nowhere to be seen.

He'd never seen her so far from put together before. Even in her most frantic moments, there had always been something commanding and otherworldly about her. Now she just looked like a girl in her twenties who had taken one too many hits to keep smiling. He didn't reply.

The lights' hum felt like an accusation.

"He's stronger than us," she said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "You can't disobey his commands, but if I tried to fight back, I'd be dead too. I'm not used to people being so much more powerful than me." Her voice was distant. "So this one time, if you're scared too, I won't make fun of you. You're a bastard, but you're the only one I've got to talk to too."

The fan turned, uncaring. Once a revolution, it squeaked quietly.

Twin snakes of fear and rage coiled in his chest until one could not be distinguished from the other. "So," he said, forcing that false carelessness back into his voice, "you _do_ think he's got a spell on me."

Golden eyes flicked to him from under tangled hair, and Medb smiled sadly. "I don't think you've made a single decision of your own in all the time since he showed up. I think you can only think rebellious thoughts now because he's asleep. I— Cu?" she broke off with a surprised squeak as he stood and pushed past her.

In moments, she was out of sight. She wasn't following him.

He and Abaddon needed to talk.

* * *

_Next Chapter: Why We Fight_


	31. Why We Fight

_Note: Okay, first things first. I'm sorry I kind of dropped off the face of the Earth without any warning. I didn't handle that very well, but it wasn't really a planned hiatus, and there's not a good way to get a message out to all my readers without just... publishing a new chapter. I could offer up a bunch of excuses, but the truth is that I kind of got to a point where the kind of responsibility I was putting myself under... probably wasn't very healthy. I was stressed about not writing, which made it even harder to write, which made me even more stressed, and it wasn't great._

_I'm not dead. The fic's not dead. I'm not a hundred percent sure when I'm posting the next chapter, or what my schedule is going to be, but I do have almost fifteen thousand words written that I haven't published yet. They're just not really /complete/ chapters, so much as a bunch of scenes in various states of finished. On top of that, I've still been having ideas and making notes in my big Planning Document. Don't worry, there's a lot of really cool shit coming._

_I just really wanted to put this chapter out there so I could touch base, let everyone know that I'm still here, and that this isn't over. I hope some of you will bear with me while I tinker around and get myself up and running again. If you have any questions or anything, you can find me on tumblr as ashendreamer, on twitter at theashendreamer._

* * *

The girl sits on his shoulder, and her weight is reassuring. He doesn't feel the cold, but he does see her breath misting in the air, and remembers that that means _she_ is probably cold. There isn't anything he can do about that but to get her home, where the lights are soft and fires burn in lonely hearths. The girl sings softly, the words indistinct, her tone melancholy.

He had a name once.

He has a different name now.

He likes this one better, because the girl is the one who says it.

The song she sings in an old one, one he has heard a hundred times or more since his summoning. A part of him feels the pull of the music, as bone-deep and instinctual as love and hate, but the music is not his, and so he will not take it from her. Still, he knows the melody as well as any song he ever sang in life, and her voice is pretty and clear as crystal glass.

In the middle of the melody, the girl trails off, and for a moment all he hears is the low whistle of the wind and the crunch of his heavy footsteps in the forest detritus and piling snow. A quizzical grunt.

The girl sighs heavily. A quiet exhalation of breath. "Leaving was the right thing," she says firmly.

He grunts again. He has no real opinion on the matter, beyond a general distrust of anyone other than the two of them, but the purple girl had been true to her word. She had not harmed his Master.

"Yes, Berserker," she said patiently, as though he had protested. "Even the way I did. She'll be fine."

The girl often does this. Uses him as a vessel to work through problems with. He doesn't mind. In his clearest moments, he knows that this helps her more than any genuine attempt to converse would. This was one of those moments.

"She needed to sleep anyway," she continues, though a note of doubt creeps into her voice. "I just gave her a little push. I did her a favor, really. She should thank me when she wakes up."

He steps carefully over a fallen tree, one massive hand lifted to steady her. She wraps her arms around his massive palm, and a feeling like warmth touches his chest. A part of him wonders whether he is a better father this time. Mostly, he doesn't remember that that means.

(He remembers what he is in the heat of battle. The blood-rage feels too familiar to allow him to forget.)

Gingerly, he releases her, and her hands fall away from him. He doesn't need to look to see that she has crossed her arms over her chest. He knows her well. He knows just enough to know how little he knows; this is not his place. This is not his time. This is barely even his body.

Even his memories from this existence — _since the summoning,_ a voice he barely understands whispers — are foggy. Standing in an unfamiliar forest, snow pounding so hard it was almost hail, roaring his defiance as the blood of starving beasts splatters his blade, a piercing scream from behind. The first time the girl held his hand, looking strangely defiant and embarrassed at the same time. His brief skirmish with the golden girl on the long stairs, the look of fear on her face overpowering all other emotion, until _his_ girl's voice called him back, though he would have easily won.

"Besides," she mumbles, "she should _also_ thank me for not killing her when I had the chance. I could have. I could have called you any time, and _splat_." She smacks one tiny fist into the palm of her open hand. This is the tone of voice she uses when she is lying to herself. He wonders if she knows that he can read her so well, even as the actual words she says drift past like flakes of snow in the wind.

He'd like to believe that she does.

He grunts. There isn't a meaning to it, beyond leaving her an opening to continue her conversation with herself. He could have growled to remind her that she'd been laying in the snow, him chained back by a Command Spell, but he did not.

"No!" She denies his imagined reply too vehemently to be truthful. "I _don't_ feel bad at _all_. The last thing she'll remember is hugging me while I _pretended_ to cry to make a _distraction_, and she'll wake up fine and comfy in that bed! And I didn't panic! Shut up!"

_Grunt._

"Fine. Be that way." She huffs.

He doesn't smile, but only because his face doesn't bend that way.

The trek continues. One foot in front of the other. The girl shivers on his shoulder, and he wishes he had a blanket for her. He doesn't exactly think the word _blanket_, but he remembers the way they feel, the warmth they provide.

A Berserker he may be, but moments like these are the most peaceful he has ever felt.

"Berserker?" All the false bravado is gone from her voice, all the blustery self-confidence that is only sometimes true. Now, she truly sounds like a little girl. Uncertain. Nervous. "The— Sakura. What did you think of her?"

Deceptively resilient. Courageous. He is aware of how terrifying he can be, and yet, the purple girl had not bent an inch. There is something about that kind of bravery that he can respect. Should his Master will it, he will kill her, of course, but he is nothing if not loyal. These feelings are too complex for him to communicate, though, so he settles for making a noise that is not entirely threatening. Something between a question and a comment with no real meaning other than what the girl would want to take from it.

The girl seems to take this as intended. "Yeah…" she mumbles thoughtfully. He steps over another fallen log, and this time her small hands tangle in his hair to keep her balance. "Did she seem…" She fumbles for the words, lost. "Did she seem weird to you at all?"

Everything is strange. Her? Not any more or less than anything else in this foreign world he has found himself in. He tilts his head.

The girl is quiet again. They are drawing near her home, and he is growing anxious to return her. She is a small and fragile thing that must be carefully protected, and she is not a creature of the ice and snow. Not really. When she speaks again, her voice is distant. "When I was near her, I could tell something was different, but I couldn't tell… I couldn't figure out _why_." She hasn't released his hair. That's okay. It's not as though she can hurt him that way, and she takes comfort in it. "But… there, at the end…" He turns his head just enough to see her from the corner of his eye. Her little brow is furrowed, her lips twisted into a pale frown. "She felt…" Her eyes narrow, but she doesn't look angry. She looks lost. "Familiar. Do you know what I mean?"

He does not reply. He doesn't.

She studies him, as though the heavy crags of his face might reveal the answers to all of her questions. She will find no answers there. "When she was holding me, I felt…" She wraps her arms around herself again, but this time there is nothing defiant about the gesture. "...Safe. I haven't felt safe like that in so long, Berserker. I don't like it."

He grunts quizzically.

"Because it's a lie," she says softly. "Safety is a lie. Other people hurt you. They betray you. They leave." She smiles. "That's why I love you, Berserker. You're never going to leave."

He will never leave her. He is hers, and he will fight for her as long as there is breath in his body. He is glad that she knows this. She has so little. He can be solid for her.

Her face lights up in a brilliant smile, and for a moment, for the briefest, barest moment, he feels pride.

* * *

Another day, another lost cause.

Another day, another catastrophe.

Another day, another scar to add to the collection.

Archer didn't know why he'd allowed himself to expect anything different.

After all, in life, he'd declared himself a hero of justice, dedicated himself to an impossible goal, and died having made the world a measurably worse place for his having ever existed. He lived and breathed being unable to save those he loved, let alone those he didn't, so at this point, Fucking Up was pretty much his oldest friend.

If only that stopped it from hurting. Broken glass in his eye. Acid in his throat. Burning shame in his chest. Next to those, the actual injuries he'd sustained were almost soothing.

They were in a part of the city he didn't recognize. Fuyuki wasn't an enormous place, but any city was too big for any one person to really know. Not the most run down part he'd seen. Not the fanciest. Rin had excused herself at a little convenience store, mumbling something about needing to use the bathroom, but Archer had seen the haunted look in her eye. Had heard the slightest hint of a quaver in her voice. She was going to cry where no one could see her.

Archer was still in his spirit form. Shirou sat on a bench outside, occasionally stopping to brush snow off of the seat next to him, as though he expected someone would actually come sit next to him. People passed by, oblivious. The chatter of the city.

That the people were so unaware would have shocked him, a long time ago, but he'd been through enough to understand a fundamental truth about humanity: they just didn't care. If anyone had figured out how many people were missing after the ritual last night, it wasn't news. It was just the poor, after all. When people who had nothing left lost everything, there wasn't a whole lot of empathy left to go around. There was some chatter about the church having exploded, but the only gossip he ever caught took it as gospel that the problem had been a gas leak. Were the Church or the Clocktower suppressing information about the Holy Grail War, or were they truly just so apathetic?

Archer stared down at Shirou. At himself. The person he hadn't been in so long that he'd started to forget his own name. Dust still smeared his face and his clothes, but he'd at least wiped the blood from his nose and his cheek. The cut on his cheek was dark and scabbed, the skin around it pale. His hair was matted. His clothes were torn. He _looked_ like someone who had been near the church when it had gone off, and yet, no one asked him if he needed help. No one offered a hand or a comforting smile. They all just walked on by. Shirou looked distant; not concussed, exactly, but like he was having trouble keeping his thoughts on the present. For once, Archer couldn't blame him.

_Kill him now. Kill him and break the loop. Break the cycle. Kill him and find your peace._

Shirou's eyes flickered from face to face, as though each passerby were a potential threat. His face was neutral, but Archer knew himself well enough to see the panicked edge in the way his eyes moved, in how carefully set his jaw was, in his hands clenched in his lap. This was a boy trying with everything he had to harden himself against the fear and the doubt and the pain.

Archer knew all too well that doing that just made you brittle.

If Archer had had arms in this spirit form, he would have crossed them over his chest, and if he'd had breath, he'd have heaved a heavy sigh. "Hey. Asshole."

Shirou blinked, his eyes focusing. Good. The little shit wasn't completely lost in his quiet little freakout, then. His brow furrowed, and a strange feeling not unlike deja vu washed over Archer. Not for the first time. It was a strange kind of doubling; a sense of being in two places at once. He wondered if that feeling hit the younger Shirou the same way. Probably not. More than likely, he didn't have the capacity.

Archer didn't know for himself how he'd managed to survive to adulthood, let alone long enough for someone else to come along and put him out of his misery. Completely idiotically entrenched in his own obliviousness. But he had been there at one point. And now, the damn kid was trying his best not to melt down.

He was doing a terrible job of hiding it.

"What is it?" The kid murmured quietly. Irritation buzzed in the words. The first seeds of an all-too-familiar defense mechanism.

"Take a deep breath. Loosen your muscles," Archer sighed. "You keep sitting that tense, you're going to pull something."

The kid frowned, like Archer had just insulted him. Maybe he was looking for the barb couched in the friendly advice. There wasn't one, but that did seem like something Archer would do. Still, after a moment, his shoulders sagged a little, some of the nervous rigidity leaving his body. "Thanks," he said.

_Finally, some damn respect_. "You're no good to us dead," Archer said.

Shirou frowned. He was confused. Again. Archer wanted to slap the expression straight off his stupid face. "I don't think that being tense while I'm sitting on a bench is going to—"

Archer materialized.

He wasn't worried about being seen. People could justify all kinds of impossible things if they wanted to. A guy appearing out of thin air? They probably just hadn't noticed him there — or maybe he'd just come out of the doorway while they hadn't been paying attention. By the time they reached wherever they were going, they'd have forgotten all about him.

People saw what they wanted to see.

"Listen to me," Archer said, crossing his arms and taking the seat on the bench that Shirou had probably been saving for Rin.

Shirou frowned harder. "If you're just going to insult me again—"

"Mouth closed," Archer said, surprising himself with how calm he sounded, considering how irritated he felt. "You can't listen and talk at the same time."

Shirou crossed his own arms in an upsetting mirror of Archer's. "Fine."

"Who are you?"

He blinked. "Who—? Archer, are you feeling okay?"

The stupid kid's voice had taken on such a note of sympathy that it made Archer _cringe._

Archer forced the grimace off of his face. "Who is Shirou Emiya?"

There was a long moment of silence. Archer very deliberately did not look at the boy. Instead, he looked around at the sight before him. People milled around. People getting late lunch. People stumbling by, trying not to look like fools as they tripped on the same shitty spot in the concrete. People just being… people.

It wasn't something Archer got to see often. Not even before he'd died.

"I'm…" Shirou's voice sounded strange. "I don't know how to answer that."

_The rope around his neck was scratchy. That was what he remembered most about his death. Not the circumstances, not the pain or the fear, not the foolish pride that goeth before the short fall and the sudden stop. He remembered wasting one of his last thoughts on the most meaningless of details. He could think of nothing more appropriate._

"Of course you don't," Archer said simply. A sparrow hopped along and pecked at a broken chip. "That's why you're going to lose everything."

Shirou stiffened beside him. No regard for the advice a moment ago. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Archer said levelly, "that you are a fool, Shirou Emiya. You have always been a fool. You will always be a fool. What do you care about? In your heart of hearts, what do you want more than anything else in the world?"

Silence, but for the quiet clamor of a city in motion.

"I want to be a hero," Shirou responded quietly. "You've heard me say it."

"A hero, huh?" Archer laughed. "A hero. Do you think you've been acting very heroic lately?"

Shirou didn't reply. He was smart enough to know when he was being baited. It was _shocking._

"Because, see," Archer continued. "You just tried to assassinate someone. Sent your dogs in to kill a man without letting him know you were coming. Does that sound like something a hero would do?"

Silence.

"Does a hero summon an Assassin, Shirou Emiya?" There was no real reason to go after him for this, but the boy needed to stand up for himself in a real way—in a way that mattered. Archer needed to see that this kid was worth saving. That his indecision and his lack of self awareness weren't going to get Archer (or worse, Rin) killed. If he was going to have a crisis of identity, it was better to get it over with now, when everything was quiet. For the sake of the world.

That's what he told himself.

"I didn't choose him," Shirou finally said. "I didn't choose anyone. I didn't want any of this."

_He believes it, doesn't he? _"This is _exactly_ what you wanted," Archer said. "You wanted to be a hero. A hero of justice isn't a hero of anything without an enemy. Because let's face it. You weren't training to open a soup kitchen. You were training for war. All that time in that goddamn shed was for something, and this _is_ _that something_. Now, you've got your chance, and you're wasting it."

"You don't know me." Archer could almost hear Shirou's muscles creak as the boy clenched his fists. "You don't know anything about me."

Archer nodded and considered his next words carefully. He didn't want to give the kid the keys to the kingdom about his identity, so being clever was the only thing he could count on.

"I know who you summoned," Archer said finally. "There can't be a summoning without resonance. The soul of the Master and the soul of the Servant must harmonize. If you weren't at all like him, he wouldn't be here."

"Is that a bad thing?" The kid spoke without thinking. "Assassin… he doesn't seem like a bad guy. He's a little… intense, yeah, but…" He trailed off. Archer could tell how weak his own protestations sounded, even to himself.

"Do you know who he is?" Archer said. "And I don't mean in an existential way. Hassan-i-Sabbah. Do you know who he is?"

Shirou was quiet again. A shadow passed over his face. "No," he said, but that wasn't a complete answer. He'd been having the dreams. Every Servant had dreams about their Master's life, and every Master had dreams about their Servant's. They were often cryptic, and rarely pleasant.

People with happy, idyllic lives didn't usually end up as Heroic Spirits.

"Well," Archer said. "I know a thing or two. Do you know where the word 'assassin' actually comes from?"

"No," Shirou said slowly. He didn't understand the apparent change in subject. "I don't."

"It comes from him. No one knows who he was, really, but he founded an order of killers around a thousand years ago. The _Hashshashin_. Assassins. See?"

The kid didn't respond.

"A cult leader might be closer to what he was than anything. Holed up with his followers on a mountain until they all got themselves killed by some army or other. Think he was dead by that point, though." He frowned. "Actually, _dead_ might be a relative term, all things considered. I've talked to the guy, and it seems like he's been hanging around killing people for a lot longer than he should have been, historically speaking." _Getting sidetracked in minutiae. Again. _"Maybe he's got ideals, and maybe he thinks he's doing good, but he's still a murderer. You know what happens when you kill enough people for the sake of others? You know what happens when you use death to try to make a world where no one has to cry?"

Something changed in Shirou's expression, and before Archer had the chance to wonder if he had said too much, the balance of power had already shifted. "Who are _you_, Archer?" he asked, his voice quiet.

_Shit._ "You think you're being clever, turning that question back on me? I know who I am. That's not the issue." Anger rose up in him. Self-loathing. Shame. He forced them down.

"You know an awful lot about all this," Shirou pressed. "You seem like you know a whole lot about me. What I'm thinking. Who I am. Who are you?"

"You know who I am?" Archer hissed, the burning embers flaring into flames in his chest. "I'm what happens. I'm what happens when you do all those things. You know why I hate you, _Shirou Emiya_? Do you know what I see when I look at you?" He turned to look at his younger self, and found himself face-to-face with a look of steady determination. It did not quench the anger. "I see someone walking toward the same goddamn cliff that I walked off of. I see someone about to make the same _stupid mistakes_ that I made. You're going to destroy yourself. Great. Who gives a shit? No, you're going to drag every single person you love into the mud with you. _Hero of justice_. Your ideals will tear you to pieces, and there won't be enough left of you for the vultures. Because that's what happens. That's what happens when you're _arrogant_ enough to think that a hero is something that anyone can be. That anyone _should be_."

The rage now boiling in his eyes had struck terror into brutal monsters and the innocents he was trying to save alike, and still, Shirou Emiya met his gaze without flinching. "Sounds to me like you're angry because you gave up."

His fingers ached for his blade. Again. Again. Now was his chance. Now was the moment. With his blood singing in his ears, he prepared to project in one hand as he grabbed a fistful of the front of Shirou's shirt with the other—

_MONSTER_

_TRAITOR_

_BUTCHER_

_pejoratives screamed from the throngs of _

_victimsperpetrators__**people**_

_he did everything he could to save_

_BUTCHER_

_BUTCHER _

_BUTCHER_

_the long walk_

_the last walk_

_betrayed but content_

_he goes to his last reward_

_a hero forever and ever_

_**SEE, THIS IS HIS END**_

_**SEE, THIS IS **_

"_God damn it, Archer!" _Her voice rang out like a bell as her open palm took him full in the face. In an instant, he was on his feet, his bones ringing, his breath coming in pained gasps. Like a panicked animal, his eyes flicker from Shirou, his face pale, a new bruise already joining the collection, to Rin, her face flushed with anger, her other hand raised. "Get off him!"

Shirou waved a vague hand. "It's okay, we were just… just talking," he mumbled.

Rin shook her head incredulously, but otherwise ignored him. The adrenaline fading, he noted distantly that her eyes were not red, as he had expected. Rather, her face was clean, but for the scrapes, and her fury seemed crystal clear. "Listen to me, Archer," she snarled, pressing into his personal space and jamming a finger deep enough into his chest for it to hurt. "_Do not touch him again._" For a moment, he thought she was about to stupidly burn her final Command Seal, but the iron vice of compulsion did not descend upon him.

Still, he found himself taking a step back, his face darkening. There were stormclouds in his chest. He looked back to Shirou, then spit on the ground. "I don't care what you become. Maybe you'll make a better assassin than you do a hero."

* * *

I do not sleep.

I don't know if I'm capable of sleeping. Not really.

A clock ticks. The seconds feel like hours.

_Tick._

There is a mortal turn of phrase to describe discomfort. Your skin crawls.

I do not think they ever meant it so literally. Invisible spiders skitter across my skin. My muscles twist and contract, though I do not move. My bones pulse to an invisible drumbeat. I am covered in sweat, and my skin is pale and grey. The essence of mortality and the essence of divinity are incompatible, and Zouken's spell was imperfect. It is not enough for the flesh to contain the spirit; the flesh must be attuned. There is a fundamental incompatibility in my existence.

_Tick._

I broke something when I held too much of my own power in my hands. A crack in the dam. I can hold back the flood — that is not the issue — but I must always be cognizant of the potential overflow.

The bed is hard beneath my back. The pillow scratches the back of my head uncomfortably. I take great heaving breaths, and I wonder if I even need the oxygen. An eternity in an instant, an eon in a moment.

_Tick._

A battle that everyone lost.

The longing. The hunger. They do not retreat as I had hoped they would. The electric thrill I felt in the heat of battle, in the sight of the boy's blood — they are conspicuous by their absence. I had not noticed they were missing until I felt them for that first time. I do not know if I will ever be able to forget them.

I do not want this.

I do not want that side of him—

Me. I do not want that side of me. I don't want to enjoy violence and death. I don't want to long for the hatred in the eyes of someone who is helpless before my blade.

But I do.

I will fight it. I will fight it.

But it is a part of me.

It sickens me.

The contradiction tears me apart as hungrily as the physical rejection of my divine essence. My body will adjust. By tomorrow, I will be in control again. I will be able to defend myself again. But will my mind?

I am a monster.

Of course they would come for me. Of course I am their target.

_But I do not want to die._

_I will not return._

I will not be a weapon any longer. I will not kill uncounted infinities for a God I have never met and do not understand.

And when I stand amid their bodies, blood cooling on the ground, scythe in hand, the Grail will appear to me. When I am alone in the rubble, it will offer me its power.

And I will have a choice to make.

More and more, I think I know what I will choose.

Azrael had no moral code, for he had no need of one. Kirei had no true code, because he fundamentally couldn't understand the concept of good. But there was a man who _did. _Someone that Kirei Kotomine knew better than he knew anyone else. Someone he understood. Someone he had, in some ways, become obsessed with. A man who was the hero the world needed.

At the close of the Fourth Holy Grail War, Kiritsugu Emiya destroyed the Grail for the greater good. In doing so, hundreds died.

He made the right choice.

Kill one to save a thousand.

Kill part of the city to save the world.

Did he enjoy it? Did he take pleasure in it? I don't think he did. That's part of what so haunted me about him.

But that's part of what made it the right choice.

Humanity in all its myriad worlds labors under threat of execution, subject to rules they were never told and can never understand. No one polices them until after the fact. Given enough time, every single timeline will have its turn on the butcher's block.

I think...

I think I could save them.

Through the power of the Grail…

With a resounding crash, the door flies open. I had locked it, but this does not matter to my Lancer. Wood splinters as the deadbolt smashes free, and the door's handle drives a deep dent into the wall. He surges through with all the fury of a charging bull, cold fury in his eye.

I have never seen him like this.

Kirei never saw him like this.

He comes to a halt at the foot of my bed. With a clipped, angry motion, he thrusts his hand to the side, and the crimson lance springs fully formed to his hand. "We need to talk, bossman." There is none of the easy bravado in his voice. This is Cu Chulainn in the grip of a cold rage.

This is expected. I know him well enough to know what he's worked himself into a frenzy about.

I don't know the answer to his question any more than he.

I speak slowly, pushing my feverish body into a sitting position. Sweat stains the bed beneath me. "If you took that lance and pierced my heart, Cu Chulainn, do you think I would die?"

He blinks, cocks his head like a dog. His lip tugs down in the barest hint of a frown. "What?"

I force my limbs to steady, though I cannot change the grey pall of my skin. "If you used Gae Bolg to strike true. The effect before the cause. My heart, destroyed. A bloody hole in my chest. Do you think I would die? Vanish back into the Grail?" I meet his gaze. I don't know what he sees in my eyes, but he falters. "If you brought everything you had to bear against me, if you struck true, do you think you could kill me?"

He grits his teeth. Forces down the fear and fans the flames of his anger. "So that's how it is, is it?"

"And if it didn't kill me," I say, and I feel _him_ in my voice. "Do you know what would happen next? Do you think you would simply be allowed to die? To vanish into the night in a blaze of glorious combat? Do you think that you will be allowed that satisfaction?"

"You—" he begins.

"Do not speak," I say softly.

His mouth closes with a clamp, but the fires of hatred burn even brighter. We can never be friends, now. A part of me feels a pang of sadness at this loss, but you cannot lose what was never truly possible. This would have happened one way or another. This is for the best.

Our relationship is more honest this way.

He strains against the binding. I see the moment that he realizes that he cannot speak, and I see the moment he decides that he _is _going to try to kill me, his own well-being be damned. "You will not try to harm me," I say, and regret weighs each word down like lead. I did not want it to be this way. "You will not betray me."

He is almost purple with rage. I smile at him, and I hope he sees the sadness in it. I hope he sees that this is for the best. Emotions still overwhelm me. A tear streaks silently down my face, and it is no act.

From the moment he was introduced to the idea that he was under my control in any way, he became a ticking clock. Perhaps this could have been avoided if I had not ordered him to halt, last night in the theater. Maybe it couldn't. Some chance directive would have shown him his inability to disobey eventually.

He tries to raise his arm to strike, and he cannot. He is impotent. This is a man who is unused to genuine powerlessness, and I have shown him how little power he truly has over me.

I try to ignore the part of me that is enjoying this.

Finally, he whirls, turning to leave the way he came. He cannot speak, and he cannot kill me. All he has left is to leave. To deny me his self. If he walks out that door, I will never see him again.

"You will be back in half an hour," I say.

He is gone before I see his reaction.

Again, I have done something monstrous. Something needlessly cruel to a person who had only ever been kind to me. Regret fills my mouth like bile, but I force it down. I will need him in the days to come. I will need him, if not by my side, then at my command.

Hassan-i-Sabbah will not fall easily. Not even to me.

I don't know if that trick will work again.

I don't know if Caster will find some loophole that allows her to kill me.

I don't know if the Einzberns will have something up their sleeves to undo what their magic began.

I sink back down into the bed.

The Holy Grail War cannot be halted. It cannot be denied.

The true purpose of the Heaven's Feel is to open a door. To punch a violent hole through space and time and reality to reach the point where everything began and to which everything will return. The Origin. The Spiral of the Root.

What is God, but the name given to the Root of all things?

_A rot that takes hold in the root will spread to the branches in time. The rot must be cut away for the greater good._

I will break the cycle.

I will free humanity from the threat of annihilation for sins it knows not.

Alpha and Omega.

The beginning and the end.

I am the Angel of Death.

Through the power of the Grail, I can reach the Creator.

And if I can reach Him?

I can kill Him.

* * *

_So once again, I'm not really committing to a schedule, so I'm not sure when I'm posting again. Just know that I am working, more is coming, and it definitely won't be another three months before you hear from me again._

_Next chapter: The Sleeper Stirs_

_Stay safe, everybody._


	32. The Sleeper Stirs

Note: Content warning for... I dunno y'all. Implied offscreen violence in a sexual context but not noncon stuff?

Writing feels good. I should do it more.

* * *

_The homey smell of onions and garlic filled the room, steam pouring from the pan in front of her. Holding the handle in a tight grip, she scraped the burned bits from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, turning the contents for a more even sauté. She hummed bits and pieces of melody, without much regard for continuity or meaning; the catchy chorus of a recent pop song faded into an old lullaby from a mother she barely remembered to something that had sprung fully formed from somewhere deep inside her. _

_She was waiting for something, and killing time with the thing she enjoyed most, and for once, that was okay. The little voice that loved to remind her of all the ways in which she didn't deserve peace was silent. No one was yelling at her, and nobody had for years. Had there been a time when she'd been hurt? Maybe. The past was the past, and the past was hazy. Ephemeral. What mattered most was that she was here._

_She tapped the side of the spoon on the pan, shaking off the bits of onion still clinging tight. The heat of the burner warmed her face, and she could feel every millimeter of her smile. Had there been a time when the reminder that she existed at all had been enough to drive her into a spiral of self loathing? Maybe. The past was the past, and the past was hazy. Ephemeral. What mattered most was that she was here._

_Everything else was in the past._

_The next hour passed in the blink of an eye. The aroma of soy sauce and oil. The wet sensation of chunks of bloody meat, fresh from the butcher, in her fingers. Birds singing in the soft spring evening, drifting in on a draft of cool air. The humming became singing, and she twirled, the white dress she wore billowing beautifully with the movement. In the same fluid motion, she grabbed an expensive white bowl — taken from her old home, of course — and filled it from a battered old ladle — Shirou's. It wasn't for her, but she couldn't resist the urge to take a small spoonful of it for herself. It tasted rich, with just a hint of fatty indulgence. _

_Perfect._

_The bowl was hot, so as she sang, she set it on a little wooden tray, along with a glass of water, a spoon, and a small pile of napkins. It was all deceptively heavy, so she had to be careful with it. It would be a shame if she dropped it all over their beautiful home; she didn't mind cleaning, but she was always a little worried about the stains._

_Her beloved was in the shed, these days. It was where he was most comfortable, so she'd been happy to clear a space of tools and junk and move their bed. Ever so carefully, she set the tray onto her hip, balanced on one hand, and knocked gently on the door. "I'm here," she said. "I brought dinner!"_

"_Come in," he called back, and she could hear the warm smile in his voice. He loved her. He_ loved _her. The thought of it still brought butterflies to her chest, even after all this time. _

_She pushed the door open, reminding herself once again that she really needed to fix that latch, and the scent of familiar blood caressed her like an old friend. The room was badly lit — it didn't have electrical outlets that worked, so she couldn't exactly bring all her favorite lamps in to give the place a little more life. Still, she knew the room as well as the back of her own hand, so she did not falter as she entered, stepping over a coil of old chain that she still hadn't moved since the last time she'd changed them. The walls were old and crumbling, but vibrant chrysanthemums grew in the cracks, and vases of red and white roses flanked the bed._

_The bed barely fit in the shed, but they'd made it work. Shirou, the love of her life, lay spread-eagled on the mattress, chains looped lovingly around his wrists and his ankles. Each length of chain dangled down the sides of the bed, each bound to a different leg. He was naked from the waist up, and the spots in which she'd carved sweet nothings into him were healing well._ Most Beloved, _the first, was healed almost to a scar, while_ My Hero, _the most recent, still dripped blood. Of course she would let old wounds heal before moving on. Of course she would. His left arm looked a little chafed; she'd have to change that binding sooner than expected, but sometimes, he did get a little squirmy and that was okay. His broken nose looked like it had started bleeding again while she'd been fixing him dinner. That was a shame. She'd hoped it was done doing that, but at least she was here to help now._

_His eyes lit up like beacons the moment she stepped through the doorway, and she wanted to cry happy tears. Love. She was loved. It was still something she could barely believe was possible. _

_She set the tray down on the old workbench they used as a nightstand, and leaned down to kiss him. His lips were dry and chapped, and the blood running over them gave them a certain taste, but he returned the affection as gently as he ever did. He'd never once been rough with her. Never pushed. Not once. His tongue probed questioningly at her lips, and she deepened the kiss, running her hands through his matted hair. _

_When she pulled back, he looked disappointed, the way he always did. It was cute. She smiled, wiping the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. "You need a bath."_

_Shirou snorted. "I can think of a couple things I need."_

_She giggled, her cheeks flushed, and she pressed a soft finger to his lips. "First thing's first. You need to eat."_

_It wasn't the food that his eyes were hungry for. "That can wait," he said, but the nearly-deafening gurgle of his stomach put the lie to that almost instantly. The look of chagrin on his face was so pure and boyish that she dissolved into laughter; he tried to look stern, but soon he was laughing too. Their laughter faded at the same time, and she couldn't resist the little indulgence; she trailed her fingers over his scabbed and scarred chest, luxuriating in the feeling of his skin, and he shifted under her touch, greedy for more. Her fingers came to rest just above the waistband of his jeans, and she smiled. "Not yet."_

_With an exaggerated groan, he rolled his eyes. "When did you get so cruel, Sakura? I'm dying over here."_

_She pecked him on the cheek, then turned her back to him to finish preparing the dinner. Just one thing left to do. From a cabinet, she drew out a small glass vial, glistening with red liquid. "Who is it today?" he asked with interest. _

_She considered the vial, turning it first this way, then that, in her fingers. There was no label, but she didn't need labels to tell them apart. "Miss Fujimura, today. You've been tired lately, so I think you could use some of her energy." She uncorked the top, and with an entirely unnecessary flourish, she poured the blood into the bowl. _

"_You're telling me," he grumbled, and the chains rattled as he shifted slightly. "I don't know. Maybe I'm coming down sick."_

"_Well," Sakura said, sitting beside him, the tray on her lap. "I'll be here to take good care of you if you are." She dipped her spoon into the bowl, and offered it out to him. _

_He leaned up as much as the bindings allowed, hungrily swallowing the first bite. He fell back a little, a heavy sigh on his lips. "You're getting better and better, Sakura. One of these days, you'll be a better cook than I am." He smiled, and love swelled once again in her breast. _

"_Maybe that'll be what I write on you today," she said softly. _"Teacher."

_He considered this. "I think there's probably a better way to say it, but… it's not a bad idea." He glanced at the bowl, and she fed him another spoonful. _

_She nodded. "Sounds like a plan, then." The knife she used to carve into him was within reach, and a part of her wanted to grab it and put it to use right then, to make concrete this aspect of their relationship, but like she'd said. All that would come after he ate._

_He ate in companionable silence for a few more minutes, and when the bowl was empty, she set it aside. "Good?"_

_He nodded. "Very."_

_She stood, and his eyes followed her, a question in his gaze._

"_I've got blood all over my dress," she said simply. "I'm going to go pretty up a little." With a gentle touch, she caressed his face; down his cheek, over his chin, until her fingers rested on his throat. "Wait for me?"_

_He swallowed, excitement clearly getting the better of him. "Okay."_

_A few minutes later, she stepped out of the shower, a hungry heat burning in her lower belly. The towel she dried off with was a peculiar bright crimson, and it was strangely coarse in her hands. She stepped in front of the mirror, just for a moment, and—_

_She stopped._

_Something was wrong. _

_The smell of blood filled her nose again, and this time, it turned her stomach. Nausea assaulted her every sense, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the mirror._

_The Sakura that stared back at her was—_

_It was her._

_But it wasn't._

_In the mirror, her hair was not a familiar purple, but a solid black. The way it had been as a child. But that wasn't—_

_Was that right?_

_Was that her?_

_Tearing her gaze away from the reflection, she looked down at her hands, at her arms, at her chest; her skin was smooth and unbroken, the way it had always been. No scars to even mark her as broken._

_The Sakura in the mirror—_

Her _body was covered, head to toe, in bloody tattoos. Tattoos or scars or burns; it was disconcertingly difficult to tell. Swirls and unfamiliar letters and lines and curses that radiated a palpable sense of _hatred. _Hardly an inch of untouched skin remained. She blinked, and the mirror-Sakura's eyes had become a piercing yellow._

_Sakura, the real Sakura, took a panicked step back. _

_The Sakura in the mirror didn't move._

_The bathroom swirled and pulsed, running like wet paint, and again, nausea and bile rose in her throat. Everything but her and the mirror dissolved into inky blackness._

_Shirou. She needed Shirou._

_But Shirou was in in chains and bloody and oh god, had she done that to him, had she carved his flesh and taken from his body and the darkness became a tunnel, her at one end, the tattooed Sakura at the far end as wind roared and her breath locked in her chest and she opened her mouth to scream—_

_The sound and fury fell away. She screamed, but she could not even feel the sound vibrating in her throat. There was a hand on her shoulder. Gripping tight. Pulling her back. Pulling her away from—_

_The other Sakura silently raised a single finger to her lips._

_And smiled._

* * *

"Don't wake her up," Rin whispered.

"Look at her, though," Shirou whispered back. "We can't just leave her like that. It can't be comfortable."

Sakura was snoring softly, her face peaceful. She'd lost the grey pall she'd had this morning, and she didn't look nearly so clammy to the touch. However, only about half of her was on the bed. The top half. Her knees were planted firmly on the ground, her hands dangling; her chest, meanwhile, was on the mattress, her head turned to the side. Her back rose and fell gently in time with the snores, and what he was pretty sure was one of his scarves was wrapped firmly around her neck. Shirou wasn't sure if she'd fallen asleep in the process of getting _into_ bed or getting _out_ of bed, but it was a cute enough sight, seeing her all sprawled out like that, that his heart had skipped a beat upon poking his head into the room.

"She needs the sleep, though," Rin said. It was kind of nice to hear such a note of understanding compassion in her voice. "If you try to move her, you'll just wake her up. You said she's sick, right?" She shook her head. "No wonder she's tired enough to sleep like that."

Rin was probably right, but it just seemed kind of mean _not_ to try to get her back into the bed. She was already probably going to wake up sore from sleeping in such an unnatural position, and Shirou didn't want to let that get any worse. "I'm just going to go tap her shoulder," he said.

Rin rolled her eyes. "Alright, Doctor Emiya."

"I haven't seen _your_ medical degree, Doctor Tohsaka," Shirou replied pleasantly, and Rin snorted. Gently, he approached the sleeping Sakura, careful not to make any loud or sudden noises that might jar her awake. As silently as possible, he knelt beside her and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Sakura?"

The moment he made contact, her eyes fluttered open, groggily seeking out his face and meeting his gaze. When she spoke, her voice was heavy and slightly slurred; it must have been a really deep sleep. "Shirou…?"

Shirou blinked, surprised, then grinned. "You know, Sakura, I don't know if I've ever actually heard you say my name before." There was something nice about it, if he was being honest. Calling him Senpai after all this time was a little like an old, warm nickname, but at the same time, he'd always felt like there was a little bit more distance to it than he knew what to do with.

"Wel…" She shook her head gingerly, as though it hurt a little to move, and yawned wide. The sound she made was like a little squeak, and once again, Shirou's heart did something weird in his chest. "Welcome home…"

He smiled. Seeing her face like this, like nothing was wrong… it was like a cool drink of water after a long walk through the desert. It was like the moment he got to lie down after a hard gym session with Mitsuzuri, back when he'd been a regular at the archery club. It was like… coming home. "You were really out, huh?"

Sakura furrowed her brow; she looked like she was trying to remember a word on the tip of her tongue, but that she couldn't quite find. "I was having a dream…" she said, her voice still sleepy.

"Anything good?" he asked lightly.

"I don't remember what it was," she murmured. "But I think it was a nice dream…" Her eyes wandered back to his, and seemed to focus for the first time. She pushed herself back until she was sitting on her knees, and Shirou suddenly realized his hand was still on her shoulder. He went to take it back, but before he could, her smooth, slender hand was over his, gently pinning it there. "I remember feeling… warm," she said softly, her eyes hazy. "Warm and safe…"

Rin cleared her throat, and the two of them jumped. When she spoke, though, her voice was bubbling with laughter. "How're you feeling, Sakura? Any better?"

Sakura self-consciously adjusted the scarf as she scooted back, away from Shirou. "O-oh, Tohsaka-senpai, I-I didn't realize you were there," she squeaked. "I'm…" She trailed off, looking down at her hands. Shirou wasn't sure what she was looking for, but apparently she found it, because she soon nodded. "I feel a little better."

Shirou frowned. "I'm glad to hear that, Sakura, but you seemed really messed up this morning. You should probably get back into—"

She shook her head vehemently. "No, I'm okay. I've been…" She trailed off, her eyes widening. "Illya!"

Shirou and Rin exchanged a wary glance. "Illya…?" They asked simultaneously.

"Is she still here?" Sakura's voice was anxious, but not exactly terrified.

Instantly, Rin's guard went up. She whirled, and even from here Shirou could feel the magic swirling around her. "_Illyasviel was here?"_

Sakura frowned. "I guess she's gone…" She didn't look relieved by the possibility. If anything, she looked… sad. "I was hoping she would stay, but I guess she left." She frowned, and Shirou noted that she still seemed to be half-asleep as she spoke. She wiped at her eyes like a sleepy toddler. "You didn't notice any big holes in the house, did you?"

"N… No?" Shirou said. "Big holes?"

"Oh, good," Sakura said, sighing a little and dropping her hands into her lap. "I was also worried that Berserker would get impatient and try to come inside."

Shirou looked at Rin, and Rin looked at Shirou. He wondered if the look of confused incredulity on Rin's face was a mirror of his own. "I think we have a lot to talk about," Shirou finally said.

* * *

It took nearly an hour and a half for each of them to tell their respective stories.

Sakura went first; she regaled them with the halting, nervous story of finding Illya passed out in the snow, bringing her back to the house, and nursing her back to health, at which point she got so tired she passed out. Illya had just been gone when they'd woken her up. Shirou couldn't shake the feeling that there was something she wasn't telling them, but Rin seemed more than satisfied with Sakura's tale. Shockingly so, even.

"You believe me?" Sakura asked tentatively.

Rin blinked. "Why wouldn't I? You're not a liar. Not about stuff like this, anyway."

Sakura sagged a little at that, but she nodded slowly. "I wish I hadn't fallen asleep," she mumbled. "I wish I could have convinced her to stay."

Rin looked at Shirou, as though he might have something valuable to contribute, and he shrugged. "It sounds like you two made some kind of connection," he said lightly. "Maybe she won't want to kill us as much if you two are friends now."

"Friends," Sakura said cautiously, as though she would trigger a landmine below her feet if she said it too confidently. "She… I don't know. She seems lonely. I hope the two of us can be friends."

"I swear," Rin said sourly. "If this power of friendship crap is what wins this Grail War, then I don't want it. I'm out. Done." Shirou had spent a lot of time with her over the last few days, though, and it was getting easier to tell the difference between when she was being genuine and when she just _thought_ she was being genuine. Sakura and Rin both looked at him as he laughed, mirrored looks of confusion and bewilderment on their faces.

"You wouldn't get it," he said, then started laughing again.

Rin and Shirou's turn was much more chaotic; the two of them kept talking over each other, bickering harmlessly about small details that didn't matter, jumping confusingly backwards and forwards in time. Shirou didn't remember ever having a sibling, but he thought that maybe this was what it was like. It was a wonder that Sakura seemed to be following any of it as well as she was. They didn't leave anything out, even if there were parts that Shirou would have preferred Rin keep to herself. Sakura didn't need to know how long he'd been unconscious, or the part where Archer had tried to pick a fight with him on the side of the road. She really didn't need to know that last bit.

Sakura asked a few questions, but they were short and to the point. He could almost see it in real time as she drew her armor back over herself. The kind of pleasantness she used as a shield when she was truly hurting. _Is she trying to stay strong for me? Or is she that close to breaking?_ Again, the scarf around her neck drew his eye. Though she claimed to be feeling better than she had been the night before, she still wore it as though she were feverish. Shirou didn't know what to make of that. This was new. If she was comforted by it, though, then who was he to make a fuss?

"And then we got here, and found you," Shirou said brightly, trying to make up for the hurt that might-or-might-not actually be there. "And now we're all caught up."

"That's a strong way to put it," said Rin. "If anything, with Sakura's story, we have more questions than answers. And we already had a _lot_ of questions."

"I think we have some answers at least. If Illya was willing to sit and talk with Sakura, then maybe we have another ally."

"Or maybe she's going to exploit our weaknesses." Rin's voice was cold as she crossed her arms over her chest, but she threw a nervous glance at Sakura. "No offense, Sakura. You did a good thing, but… I'm worried."

"Well…" started Sakura. She seemed a little less groggy, but there was still a sleepiness to her. "We have a lot to be worried about. What's one more thing?"

"I have an opinion," Archer's dry voice drifted in from the direction of the hallway. As always, the sound of that smug bastard filled Shirou with the desire to perform uncharacteristic violence. "Does anyone want to hear what I think?"

"No," Shirou and Rin said in unison.

Sakura smiled sheepishly. "A-are you sure we shouldn't hear what Mister Archer has to say?"

"We already know what he's going to say," Shirou said. He cleared his throat, then launched into the best Archer impression he could muster. "Don't trust anyone. Friends are made up. You should have killed her, even if she was being nice, because that's all I know how to do. Also, stab Shirou in his sleep, because he's not having a bad enough day yet."

Sakura frowned at him, but there was a strange look in her eye, and Rin blinked at him. "Wow, Emiya," she said finally. "That was chilling."

"I don't sound like that," Archer grumbled. "But fine. If you don't want to hear it, whatever. Not like I give a shit."

Rin slapped her palm to her face probably a little too hard. "Oh my god. That _is_ what you were going to say."

Archer folded his arms over himself and remained silent. Sakura even managed to smile, pulling her sweater around herself a little bit looking very comfortable otherwise. Shirou would have been mostly pleased with the exchanges—a reprieve where they'd had none—but one matter remained unattended. Well… At least one.

Assassin was nowhere to be seen, and though the Command Seal was still burned into Shirou's flesh, the sinking feeling in his gut was only getting worse.

And as if the act of glancing nervously down at the back of his hand were enough to complete the summoning once more, something shifted in the room. In the air. The breath in his lungs, just a fraction denser. The lights, just a shade dimmer. Rin was laughing. Sakura was smiling. Archer was trying to look bored and only sort of succeeding. None of them could feel it.

But he could.

Before the thought had even coalesced into something concrete, he was already pushing himself to his feet. It hurt. His muscles ached. His bones ached. Pain thudded dully in the back of his skull. That was okay. None of that was particularly out of the ordinary. Not worth mentioning, really. Still, it took him longer to stand than it normally would, even after a particularly strenuous workout.

"Emiya?" Rin said softly, blinking up at him. "You okay?"

Shirou tried to grin, but from the shadow of concern that flashed across her face, he didn't think he succeeded. "I'm good. Just need to stretch. I'm gonna walk around a little bit." He turned, not waiting for an answer, and fought to keep the pronounced limp from showing any more than it absolutely had to.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Rin started, and from the corner of his eye, he saw her scoot back from the table to get up. "You're hurt, and we don't know what's—"

In a show of surprising initiative, Sakura reached across the table and took Rin by the hand. Rin froze, as bewildered as if she'd just been slapped, and Sakura shook her head subtly, but firmly. Rin sat back, a strange look on her face.

Shirou pretended not to notice.

The door slid closed behind him, and he stood alone in the cold air. His breath misted out before him. Snowflakes danced in the air, but there was a frantic desperation to their swirls and descents. The wind had picked up a little; the flakes had grown fat and heavy. The grass had been covered by a thin layer of frosty snow, and it felt like the storm was only beginning.

_Fuji-nee would know how much snow we're supposed to get,_ he thought blandly. It was an oddly normal thought.

"So you're back," he finally said.

The wind whistled distantly.

"**Contractor."** There was an almost hollow stiffness to the word, as though the implacable facade had been… not shattered, exactly, but… shaken. Cracked. For the Heroic Spirit, it was practically a whisper, but something about his voice rattled Shirou's bones in a way it hadn't since that very first night.

That first night.

How long ago it was.

How innocent he'd been.

He wasn't dressed for the cold. He shoved his hands into his pockets, but that only helped so much. It was getting colder. He didn't know what to say. What was there to say? _Sorry for being such a screw up. Sorry for not being strong enough. Sorry, sorry, sorry._ Shame bit the back of his throat like bile.

"**We should speak."**

"Yeah," Shirou sighed. He scuffed a bit of snow off of the front path with his foot. He'd probably need to shovel it in the morning. _Anything to think about except what I really need to. _ "We probably should."

* * *

I don't think I have anything special to say today. Quarantine fuckin sucks, y'all. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy out there. Comments and shares always SUPER appreciated, you know the drill.

Next chapter: Resonance


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